How do bees sleep and perceive magnetic fields

Do bees sleep?

The short answer is yes, indeed, bees do sleep, and they exhibit some of the same characteristics as humans when they are asleep: their muscles relax and they don't move around, their antennae become immobile in characteristic positions, they are less reactive to disturbances, and their body temperature drops. Walter Kaiser reported that, unlike mammals, bees sleep most deeply near the end of their period of sleep. A series of recent experiments and observations has been defining when and how bees sleep, and Barrett Klein has published his observations of sleep patterns in honey bees, reporting that their sleep patterns differ as they mature and as their tasks change from cell-cleaner to nurse to food-storer to forager.

Younger bees sleep less often and less regularly, but the care for the brood is a round-the-clock job, so this is understandable. The circadian rhythmic sleep-wake cycle begins to be apparent in food-storers and becomes firmly established in foragers. Their active period takes place during the day, when they have access to nectar, so they sleep in a more predictable pattern, sleeping during the night for longer periods than the younger bees.

Stefan Sauer and colleagues arranged to deprive forager bees of sleep so that they could compare their sleep patterns with control bees that were allowed to maintain their normal schedule. Isolated bees were placed in a glass cylinder on a specially designed, motorized, tilting device with simulated daylight illumination. The tilting device produced a rolling movement of the cylinder, alternating with short pauses, which kept the bee awake during her normal twelve-hour sleep period.

The exhausted bees compensated the following night with longer and deeper sleep, suggesting that, like in mammals, sleep is controlled by regulatory mechanisms. This conclusion is also suggested by the results of an experiment by Thomas Seeley and colleagues at Cornell University. They transplanted two colonies and trained the older bees to forage at particular times, and they found that the foragers shifted their sleep schedules so that they would be awake when resources were available.

Do bees perceive magnetic fields?

There is some evidence that bees are sensitive to magnetic fields, but although it can be demonstrated that bees will react to changes in the local magnetic field, scientists can't explain how bees perceive it or the way they use it under normal circumstances. Working at Princeton University, James Gould determined in 1978 that the abdomens of honey bees contain crystals of magnetite and that the bees' behavior could be altered based on artificially induced changes in the local magnetic field.

Gould and colleague Joseph Kirschvink hypothesized that this substance could move within a cell and thereby convert or transfer directional information into the nervous system of the bee. Further studies conducted by learning expert M. E. Bitterman and colleagues demonstrated that the behavior of freely flying bees could be altered based on the magnetic field and that the application of magnets or magnetic wires to the bees could interfere with their behavior. There is evidence, then, that bees are sensitive to the magnetic field, or at least they are sensitive to alterations of the magnetic field; but, to date, no one has determined the degree to which this information is used.

Most scientists believe that the magnetic field is used as a backup cue in the event that other, more salient cues are absent or provide ambiguous information to the bee. Carolina Keim and others determined that there are iron-rich granules in bees' abdominal fat cells, but their research on the chemical properties and position of these granules led them to surmise that these substances are most likely not involved with magnetoreception, but probably are the result of the metabolism of iron from their pollen-rich diet.

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