When bees accidentally land in water, their wet wings keep them from lifting off and flying away. So instead, the insects reach the water’s edge by becoming tiny surfers.
A close examination of how bees swim, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows they use their wings to generate small ripples that the insect can ride atop to move forward. Understanding the physics governing how bees navigate water opens up a new way to look at designing devices that fly and swim, says study author Chris Roh, a research engineer at Caltech.
This particular research project kicked off one day when Roh went for a walk near a campus pond and saw a bee struggling to leave the water. Sunlight hit the bee in such a way that Roh could see shadows of the ripples radiating from the swimmer on the pool's bottom.
Roh and his ...
