LMP Seminar: Honeybee flight dynamics in windy conditions

The study of bee flight and their collective behavior has been the focus of many studies that have offered us insight into how bees are able to fly and how they communicate with one another. However not much is known about their fight dynamics in turbulent and windy conditions and how they manage to maneuver in such situations. Here we use 3 GoPro cameras to track honeybees in 3D during their flight to and from the hive. We create different windy conditions using fans and a mobile active grid in front of the honeybee flight paths. We find that under the conditions investigated honeybees seem to exhibit similar flight dynamics which are not dependent on the characteristics of the different flows they are exposed to. Such insight into honeybee flight and their maneuverability in windy conditions can help improve current technology such as small-scale robotics.