• Question: why and how can bees fly

    Asked by shamail575 to Claire, Joanna, Kapila, Renata, Suzanne on 19 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Claire El Mouden

      Claire El Mouden answered on 19 Jun 2013:

      Bees fly so that they can move quickly and easily from their net to flowers to get pollen. They then use the pollen to make honey (which they use as a way to store food).

      How they fly was a mystery for many years – as they have small wings and relatively big bodies…what scientists have found is that they are able to fly because they flap their wings incredibly fast – about 230 times every second!

    • Photo: Joanna Bryson

      Joanna Bryson answered on 19 Jun 2013:

      One of the tricks bees use to fly is that they have little hairs off the edge of their wings that disrupt the air vortex that would other get created and drag the wing when it flaps quickly. It took scientists YEARS to figure this out, but now that they have we’ve been able to save lots of fuel on flying by sticking little sticks out the rear of the ends of wings — look the next time you are on a plane you will see them. This is the great thing about science, you never know when some little discovery might be hugely useful.

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