Bees can communicate through weak electric fields

Biologists have long known that honeybees are capable of accumulating a positive electrical charge, buzzing their wings in the air or rubbing parts of their bodies. Previously, it was not entirely clear why insects need this charge. But recently, several scientific experiments have been conducted at once that prove the possibility of bee communication through electric fields.

Flowers usually have a weak negative charge compared to air: it helps to spew pollen on the bee during pollination (in the photo above). At the same time, the bee itself carries a positive charge, and its exoskeleton with a wax coating acts as a good insulator, so that the accumulated charge remains for a long time.

Now, laboratory experiments have shown that the bees distinguish between themselves flowers that carry a different electrical charge. In other words, they can distinguish a flower with pollen and a negative charge from a flower with a distorted electric field that another positively charged bee recently visited. Field measurements are carried out with antennae (antennas), at the base of which is a sensitive Johnston organ .
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The research results were published on April 5, 2013 in the journal Science: article “Detection and Learning of the Electric Fields by Bumblebees” (vol. 340 no. 6128 pp. 66-69, doi: 10.1126 / science.1230883).

According to scientists, this kind of behavior is a form of social communication. In fact, the bees send messages to each other, using flowers as external media.

This is not the first form of communication found in bees. Earlier, the code was partially deciphered , with the help of which the worker bee transmitted the information about the direction and distance to the target by means of the dance.