If an ant or a bee ends up far from its colony (perhaps by artificial means such as a car or a plane), what will happen to it?
Ken Cheng
School of natural sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
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Ants and honeybees can sometimes find their way back home after being displaced a good distance, whether by wind or by experimental manipulation.
They do so mainly by their systematic search strategy, which has been much studied in these animals. From their starting point, the insects begin walking or flying in loops, heading off in a different direction each time. At the end of each loop, they return approximately to where they began the search.
If the insect doesn鈥檛 stumble across their colony, these search loops grow bigger and bigger. The search turns successful when the bee or ant encounters a location from which it recognises the general direction to its home.
Ants and honeybees remember their surroundings. They can learn what the view looks like on their way out foraging and what it looks like on their way back home. When heading back to the colony, they turn this way and that to find the best or most familiar view, which should indicate the general direction home.
To find their way, ants and bees don鈥檛 have to cross over a path that they have previously travelled. This is because the 鈥渃atchment area鈥� of a learned view extends beyond the travelled route. The view at an unvisited location, if it isn鈥檛 too far from a familiar route, will have some resemblance to a learned view. If the resemblance is enough to point out the general direction home, or even guide the insect towards a familiar route, following that direction will eventually lead to success.
To ensure that they learn and remember what the view should be like on the way home, ants and honeybees frequently look back in the home direction as they head away from the colony. If you go walking on a new route by which you must return later, you too can benefit from this bit of wisdom in our insect friends.
An ant or honeybee that doesn鈥檛 navigate well enough to get home will be lost for good. It won鈥檛 survive long, and even if it does survive, it won鈥檛 start a new colony. The workers generally don鈥檛 reproduce, so all their legacy is with the queen back home.
Peter Gandolfi
London, UK
Bees are certainly capable of flying around 8 or 9 kilometres, but as a beekeeper I would prefer if they didn鈥檛 because travelling such distances back to the hive will cause them to use up all the nectar they have collected.
Generally, bees seem to visit flowers within 1 or 2 kilometres of their hive. Their navigation uses landmarks, as well as the position of the sun, and is so good that if you move the hive just a metre from its usual spot, the returning bees will fly back to the original site and will be confused at finding their home displaced.
If you need to move a hive, it should be across a distance of less than a metre or more than 5 kilometres, so that the bees don鈥檛 recognise any of the surrounding area and its landmarks, which could cause them to find their way back to the old site and not the new location.
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