Talk:Bee

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 2 February 2021 and 17 May 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Alexa-playjonimitchell.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 15:30, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 24 March 2022

In the opening sentence, suggest change "Bees are insects with wings closely related to wasps and ants" to "Bees are winged insects closely related to wasps and ants" (reads better). 2A00:23C8:7B09:FA00:1952:93D5:4B7E:BCA5 (talk) 21:00, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

 Done _signed, 511KeV ^(talk) 04:18, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Description of Bee Movie

Should the description of the Bee Movie be changed from saying "The humorous 2007 animated film" to "The 2007 animated comedy film" to upkeep the NPOV? 2600:1009:B026:F555:ECEE:C8A4:F327:3EFA (talk) 18:15, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Fair point. Done. Dyanega (talk) 17:48, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 7 June 2023

Add these subsections to flight and navigation:

Vision and Flight in Bees

Stereo vision is a common technique used by animals, including humans, to determine measurements of objects, which aids in depth perception. Essentially, people and other animals are able to use the differences in the images perceived by each of their eyes to decide the distance away from them that an object is and the depth of the object. Being able to accurately determine depth and range is essential to flight; however, the eyes of bees are only a few millimeters apart from each other, and their visual acuity is far worse than that of a human eye, which means that bees are only able to use stereo vision for objects a few centimeters away from their eyes. This range is far too low to be used for flight navigation, so bees and other insects must rely on a different method of depth perception. Instead of stereo vision, they use optic flow to measure distance.

Optic flow is the movement of objects around the eyes as they move back and forth. When an eye moves, objects that are closer to the eye move across a larger range of view than objects that are farther away. This means that the closer objects have a higher angular velocity than the objects that are farther away. Much like the eyes of humans can use stereo vision to calculate range, the eyes and brains of bees can use the angular velocity of objects as they move their eyes to determine the depth and distance of the objects (​​Srinivasan, 2021).

Direction Control

One way that bees can use optic flow to navigate is to maintain a consistent direction of flight. When flying through narrow passages, bees can balance themselves in the center of the passage by keeping the angular velocity of the walls on all sides of them equal. To test this, bees were placed in a tunnel with visual gratings on both walls. The walls were like conveyor belts: they were able to move in both directions. When both walls were stationary, the bees remained in the center of the tunnel as they flew through. This is where the optic flow on both sides of them was the same.

When one wall rotated in the same direction as the bees’ flight, the bees flew closer to the wall that was moving. This is because the moving wall appears to have a lower angular velocity to the bee than the stationary wall. To increase the angular velocity of the moving wall and decrease the angular velocity of the stationary wall to the point that both walls have an equal angular velocity, the bee moves closer to the moving wall.

Opposed to this, when one wall rotated in the opposite direction as the bees’ flight, the bees flew closer to the wall that was stationary. The moving wall appears to have a higher angular velocity to the bee than the stationary wall, so they move away from it to balance its velocity with that of the stationary wall.

Although it is impossible to know what the bees were thinking during this experiment, it is reasonable to assume that they thought they were flying in the center of the tunnel during each of these trials. They are not aware that any of the walls are moving, and they balance the optic flow on each side of them in order to stay in the center of their environment. This experiment was repeated with walls that had gratings of different spatial frequencies on each side to see if they were trying to balance the speed of the images on each side or if they were trying to balance the frequency that they saw the gratings.

Even with different spatial frequencies, these experiments had the same results as the previous set of experiments. This means that the bees balance image speed rather than frequency of objects in their view, which is very important in the real world because bees are rarely flying in symmetrical environments (Lehrer, 1994).

Speed Control

Related to their direction control, a bee’s flight speed is proportional to the angular velocity of the walls around them. In experiments in tunnels, the bees kept the wall speed at a constant of around 300 degrees per second. This means that if the walls were twice as far apart, the bees would double their speed. In the tapered tunnel, the bees slowed their flight speed down as the walls got closer together and sped back up as the walls got farther apart again.

This is a natural reflex for the bees, and there is a logical reason for this. If an insect is flying in a large, open environment, they are able to safely fly much faster than they would be able to in a closed, densely populated environment; the risk of flying into something and harming themselves is much lower in the open environment, which allows for increased speed (Srinivasan et al., 1996).

Landing

Bees rely heavily on optic flow in order to perform safe landings as well. The angular velocity of the image directly below the bee θ = Vf/h, where Vf is the forward velocity and h is the height. Bees tend to hold this angular velocity constant when they are landing, which means that their forward velocity is directly proportional to their height, so they slow down as they land. Their forward velocity slows to 0 as they reach the ground, which allows for a safe and smooth landing (Srinivasan, 2021).

The descent speed, forward speed, and angle of descent are related by this equation: tan(α) = Vd/Vf where α is the angle of descent, Vf is the forward velocity, and Vd is the downwards velocity. In addition to maintaining a constant angular velocity, bees also maintain a constant angle of descent as they land. This means that their vertical speed is directly proportional to their horizontal speed, which allows them to regulate their descent speed and decrease it as they approach the ground. Both their horizontal and vertical speeds decrease to 0 as their height approaches 0.

This is a very useful strategy for many reasons, especially when applied to robotic devices. This method of landing does not require knowledge of instantaneous flight speed or height. Rather, it just needs a constant angle of descent, which can easily be controlled, and maintenance of a constant angular velocity. This is helpful for aircrafts because the angular velocity can be kept at a level that a camera can easily measure (Srinivasan et al., 2010).

Measuring Distance

Not only do bees use optic flow and visual cues around them to control and maintain their flight, they are also able to use optic flow to measure and communicate distances to other bees. This is often in the context of telling other bees where food is located. Bees perform a dance called a “waggle dance” where they move their abdomen back and forth for a duration proportional to the “distance” that an object is away from them in certain directions. Bees do not measure “distance” in the same way humans do; they determine distance by the total angular motion they experience in flight to an object. This means that if bees flew through a narrow tunnel and a wider tunnel of the same length, they would perceive and communicate a longer “distance” in the more narrow tunnel. This does not pose an issue, though, because all bees understand distance in this way, so it is simply a different unit of measurement than the units people use (Srinivasan et al., 2000).

Ekohlberg1 (talk) 08:02, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{Edit semi-protected}} template. Lightoil (talk) 02:56, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

References

Request for topic addition: In popular culture.

Wikipedia has a category dedicated to bees in popular culture. Furthermore, bees are in Minecraft and there’s a Roblox game dedicated to bees. Brachy08 (Talk)(Contribs) 02:50, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

References