# Bees detect electric fields ...



## Phoebee (Jan 29, 2014)

This story is all over the news today, although tracing back to the original scientific publication, the discovery seems to be a few years old:

Detection and Learning of Floral Electric Fields by Bumblebees
Dominic Clarke, Heather Whitney, Gregory Sutton, Daniel Robert

Science 05 Apr 2013:
Vol. 340, Issue 6128, pp. 66-69
DOI: 10.1126/science.1230883

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/340/6128/66

One of today's articles: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ained-how-they-sense-flowers-electric-fields/

The summary is that fuzzy bees seem to detect electric fields using body hairs, a phenomenon humans also sense (although we probably are not nearly as sensitive to the effect).

Other sources I've looked into recently suggest that an electrostatic sense is used when bees follow dances in the dark of the hive. I thought I had the link but can't find it at the moment.

It occurred to me today that this could be behind some bee-havior we have been attributing to other senses, such as bees attacking black. In another thread, several posters noted that bees may attack fuzzy fabrics, but may not respond to black color. So perhaps they are sensing static charge on synthetic fur?


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## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

The bees in that yard orient to the dish...it's all about the dish. Watch for the new series "Swarm Catchers" on Discovery Channel this fall. There is a camera in a hive and an up-link to the world wide web that uses the dish to communicate.  







This yard has a 1.21 gigawatt power station behind it just about 80 yards away or less. It charges the flux capacitors in my bees time machines.  

Hahahaha


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## Phoebee (Jan 29, 2014)

Hmmm, well, you're talking to a guy who has actually operated a flux capacitor. Dr. Brown's design is nothing like the real thing, which used six strong electromagnets arranged in a cube, fields mutually repulsive, forming a magnetic dodecahedron electron trap. Into this we injected high energy electrons, which retained their high energy as a flux of moving charge, interacting with the magnets. In other words, a true flux capacitor.

Electron storage rings work on much the same principle.

I suspect it would have annoyed bees.

However, the electrical experiments I do these days are a lot tamer. I have a Keithley 610B Electrometer, which is the ideal instrument to measure electric fields under 100 V. I'm picturing some tests I could do with 9V batteries as the voltage source, and metal targets out in the garden. Put a sugar syrup source in the middle of a metal flower, and see if I can train bees to recognize the one with the sugar buy the voltage on it. I ought to be able to replicate this study, and measure the fields directly, the see if I can sense them on real flowers.


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## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

Am a scientist (sort of). M. E.
The purpose of your experiment is to show that bees relate to electrical fields.
The procedure is a bit hazy. You going to take the sugar away and see if the bees continue to search out the flower with an electrical field? 
How are you going to collect data? I think you should train the bees on a syrup flower then move the flower, take away the sugar syrup, count bees that visit the electrical field searching for the syrup. 
Analysis of the data...wow
Then the conclusion.

Get JWCarlson involved. He's an E.E. 
Sorry about my tongue-in-cheek post. It was fun.


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## Phoebee (Jan 29, 2014)

I took a quick look at the original paper and I'll try to replicate it. They put a 30 volt charge on some feeders, and attempted to train the bees to associate the presence of a charge with the availability of food. If the bees could not detect the charge they would not be able to learn the association. The same basic procedure is used to determine color and pattern ID ability.

Where I might try something new is to see if electric fields are involved in triggering defensive behavior. If I can measure the fields with the electrometer, I can verify that, for example, black fuzzy fabric can hold a charge, and then determine if the presence of a charge on the fabric causes bees to bump or sting it.


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## Phoebee (Jan 29, 2014)

Something just sparked my memory. Today most microphones are built around an "electret", the static electric equivalent of a permanent magnet. An electret is a solid body with a charge gradient locked in it. Usually these are formed by melting a candidate material, applying an electric field across it, and maintaining that field while the substance solidifies. The electric field may moved charged particles around in the liquid material, or align molecules with charged ends with the field.

Some of the earliest electrets were made from beeswax. This has me wondering if bees in any way mark their comb with electrostatic fields.

Consider that some queens refuse to lay over a wire in a comb.


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## Phoebee (Jan 29, 2014)

Aunt Betty, your message in-box is full. My reply to your PM bounced, saying you should clean out your in-basket now and then. I need to do mine, too.


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## BeeBop (Apr 23, 2015)

Ha. They put 30 volts on the feeders and the bees can detect it.
30 volts? Seriously? I can detect 30 volts with my fingers and I'm just a lowly human.


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## Phoebee (Jan 29, 2014)

Ah, but can you detect 30 volts from a distance? Say, a couple of inches or so?

A few experiments with the Keithley electrometer suggest that I can do it that way, although instrument drift exceeds the signal.


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## BeeBop (Apr 23, 2015)

Phoebee said:


> A few experiments with the Keithley electrometer suggest that I can do it that way, although instrument drift exceeds the signal.


You kids with your fancy high falutin' test equipment. Back in my day (shortly after the invention of the electron) we did it like this...


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## Phoebee (Jan 29, 2014)

BeeBop, tease all you like. I used to have a friend who routinely tested for 240V with his fingertips. But his skin usually read about 1 megohm on a multimeter.  Mine reads about 30 k-ohms, and 120V hurts like a bee sting. I have been known to test 9V radio batteries with my tongue (and have actually owned "transistor radios" powered by them). But both require actual contact. Be honest ... can your fingers detect 30 volts without making contact with a conductor? Evidently, bees _*CAN.*_

As for the Keithley being "fancy high falutin' test equipment," I'll have you know that this model is rather long in the tooth. Not so archaic as the original Keithley 600 and original 610 (which were all vacuum tube), nor as modern as the all-solid-state 610C. The 610B is transistor but with a nuvistor front end, i.e., the measurement is taken by a very small vacuum tube. This particular model is favored for electrostatics work as the nuvistor is much more tolerant of high voltage on the input than the field effect transistor on the 610C. I'm not sure of the vintage but I'd bet it was built in the 1960's.

The input impedance is > 10^14 ohms, or about like a piece of wire stuck in a block of glass.


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## Arch (Dec 3, 2014)

BeeBop said:


> You kids with your fancy high falutin' test equipment. Back in my day (shortly after the invention of the electron) we did it like this...


So when I was a young electrician apprentice I had an old near retirement journeyman mentor that routinely woke up every morning and went to his own open circuit near the kitchen to wake up by testing 120 volts in preparation for his days work. Not sure he even owned an electrical meter. He retired back around 1989 or so. He always used his thumb to forefinger for the test which he did mention grieved him some. Me.... I own meters


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## heaflaw (Feb 26, 2007)

This is unscientific, but, I have cattle as well as bees. I separate pastures into paddocks with a movable electric fence. Often, soon after I have turned them onto a new paddock, I will see a cow put her nose within an inch or so of the wire as though she is finding out if there is current on it. Others have noticed it too. We say that the cows can "smell" electricity.


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## BadBeeKeeper (Jan 24, 2015)

Arch said:


> ... He always used his thumb to forefinger for the test which he did mention grieved him some. Me.... I own meters


Yeah, me too. I've taken some pretty good hits (used to repair radar systems for the military) but even 120 I don't like. I was re-wiring to replace my well-pump pressure switch...had no diagrams, and when I switched off a breaker and the pump stopped I thought I was good to go.

Not. I was rudely alerted to the fact that the system was slightly more complicated- 120v to the pressure switch that controls another switch to supply 240v to the pump. I had only killed power to the pump itself, the pressure switch was still live. My feet were in water (the switch failed closed so the pump hadn't shut off,and stuff was leaking) and when I stuck my hand in the box my whole arm went numb, my fingers felt like someone had dropped a cement block on them.

That's what I get for being too lazy to crawl out from under the house and go up and get the meter and test it first.


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## deknow (Jul 17, 2006)

....sounds like 'badbeekeeper' is a second profession....after 'bad electrician :lookout:


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## BadBeeKeeper (Jan 24, 2015)

deknow said:


> ....sounds like 'badbeekeeper' is a second profession....after 'bad electrician :lookout:


LOL, more like 7th or 8th, there have been a few others in between.


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