Bees primarily use their keen visual abilities to find profitable flowers that advertise their nectar or pollen rewards with bright or showy flowers. Flowers that attract bees typically have yellow, blue, or purple flowers, often with radiating colors that emerge from a central point. Bees can see flower colors as they fly over the landscape, and floral odors are secondary cues that can help bees zero in on their targets. Because floral scents are not detectable over long distances, odors are probably only used to back up the visual information.
A scout bee will leave the nest without a definite destination. She will embark on a search for food resources, and as she moves she is actually noticing cues in the environment that will guide her flight home. Bees can gather directional information from celestial cues, such as the position of the sun and the sun-linked patterns of polarization that are present in the sky. Interestingly, young adult bees must learn the sky-light compass when they first begin to fly outside the nest. This was shown in experiments by Jeff Dickinson and Fred Dyer, which demonstrated that bees are not born with the ability to use this information. The second type of information, place or location, must also be learned. Bees recognize visual landmarks in the environment, such as tree lines, buildings, landscape features like hills or ridges, and use those images to build a map of their world.
In short, bees have the ability to "dead reckon" after a scouting trip. They may take an outward path that meanders around the landscape, but when they want to head home, they can simply integrate their map and compass information and fly directly home. Without experience, or without these two sources of information, a bee cannot directly find her way home, but she may be able to do so after flying in a random search pattern.
Bees have special hairs that act like sensors on their bodies to adjust their flight path in relation to wind speed and direction, enabling them to maintain a straight course of flight. In extremely hard wind, bees will take shelter in vegetation until the winds have slowed down.
Bees can only fly in very light rain. During heavy rain, the large droplets of water can actually knock bees down. Another problem that accompanies rain is low air temperature. When bees are wet, their ability to generate metabolic heat in order to stay warm enough to fly becomes very taxed. Bumblebees, which have larger bodies than honey bees, can fly at lower temperatures and also are better able to tolerate some rain. In short, honey bees don't like rain, and they usually stay at home when it rains rather than look for food.
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1. How do honey bees develop and what do they eat
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