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.

蜜蜂的任務往往很艱巨。首先，它們得到處尋找食物，然后他們得飛回蜂巢告訴同伴食物的地點。因此，蜜蜂需要在蜂巢和食物之間不斷地飛來飛去。同時，它們還要應對在飛行的途中出現的障礙物。

“在復雜的環境中，要快速找到覓食途徑蜜蜂需要面對大量的挑戰。我們所要研究的就是蜜蜂如何找到最便捷的途徑，同時也要找到最安全和最省力的途徑。”

澳大利亞昆士蘭大學的研究學者馬里耶勒·昂為了研究昆蟲的飛行路線，她和她的團隊在研究過程中為100只蜜蜂設立了一些小型有障礙的路線。

在這些路線中，蜜蜂不得不在兩個尺寸不同的路口選擇其中之一飛過。蜜蜂往往會選擇成群開展行動，他們往往會選擇更大的路口飛過。蜜蜂往往很少選擇從墻上的小洞擠過去。

但當馬里耶勒·昂在研究蜜蜂個體時，發現每個蜜蜂在選擇如何飛過洞口時的現象非常有趣。

“研究發現55%的蜜蜂在飛過洞口時幾乎沒什么誤差，其余的45%的蜜蜂要么會左偏，要么會有右偏的傾向。”

此外，有一些蜜蜂很有方向傾向。顯然，他們沒有雙手，但是它們要么是“左撇子”，要么是“右撇子”。因此，有右傾傾向的蜜蜂往往會選擇鉆過右側的孔而不是左側的，不管左側的洞有多么大或者多么有安全性。有時，有方向傾向的蜜蜂會選擇降落和飛過更小的洞口，只有這樣他們才會根據自己的方向性成功飛過洞口。

當然，即使有飛行偏差，成群的蜜蜂也能在飛過復雜環境時不會撞到對方。如果所有的蜜蜂都是右傾向性的，一大群蜜蜂或許要花更多的時間飛過一個很小的洞口，例如蜂巢入口。但是，由于有些蜜蜂存在飛行的方向傾向性，且傾向性各不相同，在遇到障礙物時，成群的蜜蜂也能很快地飛過。

馬里耶勒·昂認為終會有一天，工程師會用到這一重要發現。他們可以根據這一發現發明機器人蜜蜂群更有效地偵查復雜的障礙環境。他們還可以根據這一發現讓眾多自動駕駛的汽車在行駛時像蜜蜂一樣有序，而不像人類一樣混亂不堪。