Flight of a honeybee in turbulent wind

TL;DR

This study quantifies honeybee flight in calm and turbulent wind conditions, revealing adaptive maneuvering behaviors that could inform the design of miniature flying robots in turbulent environments.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed 3D tracking analysis of honeybee flight in turbulence, highlighting their adaptive acceleration and turning strategies under turbulent conditions.

Findings

Honeybees maintain weak correlation between speed and turbulence strength.

Honeybees accelerate slowly and decelerate rapidly during turns.

Turbulence increases the frequency of abrupt maneuvers and flight crashes.

Abstract

In windy conditions, the air is turbulent. The strong and intermittent velocity variations of turbulence are invisible to flying animals. Nevertheless, flying animals, not much larger than the smallest scales of turbulence, manage to maneuver these highly fluctuating conditions quite well. Here we quantify honeybee flight with time-resolved three-dimensional tracking in calm conditions and controlled turbulent winds. We find that honeybee mean speed and acceleration are only weakly correlated with the strength of turbulence. In flight, honeybees accelerate slowly and decelerate rapidly, i.e., they break suddenly during turns and then accelerate again. While this behavior is observed in both calm and turbulent conditions, it is increasingly dominant under turbulent conditions where short straight trajectories are broken by turns and increased maneuvering. This flight-crash behavior is reminiscent of turbulence itself. Our observations may help the development of flight strategies for miniature flying robotics under turbulent conditions.