Even without hands honeybees show handedness

By Jordan Pruitt

Honeybees.They have a difficult task.First,they have to find food.Then they have to return to the hive to tell their compatriots where to find it.The bees have to fly back and forth between the hive and their food,over and over again.And they need to deal with whatever obstacles lie along their flight paths.

“Honeybees face a lot of challenge in choosing efficient foraging routes through dense environments.And we basically want to study how they choose effective routes—the safest and least energy-expending routes.”

Marielle Ong,a researcher at the University of Queensland in Australia.To track the insects’navigation,she and her team set up tiny obstacle courses for more than a hundred honeybees.

Along the way,the bees were forced to fly through one or the other of two openings of different sizes.And as a group,the bees usually flew through the wider opening,which makes sense.Less chances of slamming their tiny bee bodies into a wall.

But things got more interesting when Ong looked at the decisions made by individual bees,one by one.

“We found that 55 percent had no biases,and the rest of the 45 percent was a split between left-handed bees and right-handed bees.”

In other words,some honeybees have a sidedness.They obviously don’t have hands,but let’s say they’re either right-handed or left-handed.So,for example,a right-handed bee would prefer to navigate the cramped right-side opening in the obstacle than go through the left-side hole,even though it was larger and safer.Sometimes,the handed bees would even land and walk through the smaller opening,just so they could use their preferred side.

These biases apparently help the members of large swarms navigate through a complex environment without crashing into each other.If all bees were right handed,it would take a long time for the entire group to pass through a small opening,such as a hive entrance.But by having a range of side biases,the entire swarm can move more quickly when it encounters an obstacle.

Ong thinks that one day engineers could apply this finding.They could design robotic drone swarms to negotiate obstacles more efficiently.They could even program self-driving cars to operate less like a chaotic assortment of humans and more like an orderly group of honeybees.

蜜蜂的任务往往很艰巨。首先，它们得到处寻找食物，然后他们得飞回蜂巢告诉同伴食物的地点。因此，蜜蜂需要在蜂巢和食物之间不断地飞来飞去。同时，它们还要应对在飞行的途中出现的障碍物。

“在复杂的环境中，要快速找到觅食途径蜜蜂需要面对大量的挑战。我们所要研究的就是蜜蜂如何找到最便捷的途径，同时也要找到最安全和最省力的途径。”

澳大利亚昆士兰大学的研究学者马里耶勒·昂为了研究昆虫的飞行路线，她和她的团队在研究过程中为100只蜜蜂设立了一些小型有障碍的路线。

在这些路线中，蜜蜂不得不在两个尺寸不同的路口选择其中之一飞过。蜜蜂往往会选择成群开展行动，他们往往会选择更大的路口飞过。蜜蜂往往很少选择从墙上的小洞挤过去。

但当马里耶勒·昂在研究蜜蜂个体时，发现每个蜜蜂在选择如何飞过洞口时的现象非常有趣。

“研究发现55%的蜜蜂在飞过洞口时几乎没什么误差，其余的45%的蜜蜂要么会左偏，要么会有右偏的倾向。”

此外，有一些蜜蜂很有方向倾向。显然，他们没有双手，但是它们要么是“左撇子”，要么是“右撇子”。因此，有右倾倾向的蜜蜂往往会选择钻过右侧的孔而不是左侧的，不管左侧的洞有多么大或者多么有安全性。有时，有方向倾向的蜜蜂会选择降落和飞过更小的洞口，只有这样他们才会根据自己的方向性成功飞过洞口。

当然，即使有飞行偏差，成群的蜜蜂也能在飞过复杂环境时不会撞到对方。如果所有的蜜蜂都是右倾向性的，一大群蜜蜂或许要花更多的时间飞过一个很小的洞口，例如蜂巢入口。但是，由于有些蜜蜂存在飞行的方向倾向性，且倾向性各不相同，在遇到障碍物时，成群的蜜蜂也能很快地飞过。

马里耶勒·昂认为终会有一天，工程师会用到这一重要发现。他们可以根据这一发现发明机器人蜜蜂群更有效地侦查复杂的障碍环境。他们还可以根据这一发现让众多自动驾驶的汽车在行驶时像蜜蜂一样有序，而不像人类一样混乱不堪。