Insects use several senses to forage, detecting floral cues such as color, shape, pattern, and volatiles. We report a formerly unappreciated sensory modality in bumblebees (Bombus terrestris), detection of floral electric fields. These fields act as floral cues, which are affected by the visit of naturally charged bees. Like visual cues, floral electric fields exhibit variations in pattern and structure, which can be discriminated by bumblebees. We also show that such electric field information contributes to the complex array of floral cues that together improve a pollinator's memory of floral rewards. Because floral electric fields can change within seconds, this sensory modality may facilitate rapid and dynamic communication between flowers and their pollinators.

Bees and flowering plants have a long-standing and remarkable co-evolutionary history. Flowers and bees evolved traits that enable pollination, a process that is as important to plants as it is for pollinating insects. From the sensory ecological viewpoint, bee–flower interactions rely on senses such as vision, olfaction, humidity sensing, and touch. Recently, another sensory modality has been unveiled; the detection of the weak electrostatic field that arises between a flower and a bee. Here, we present our latest understanding of how these electric interactions arise and how they contribute to pollination and electroreception. Finite-element modelling and experimental evidence offer new insights into how these interactions are organised and how they can be further studied. Focussing on pollen transfer, we deconstruct some of the salient features of the three ingredients that enable electrostatic interactions, namely the atmospheric electric field, the capacity of bees to accumulate positive charge, and the propensity of plants to be relatively negatively charged. This article also aims at highlighting areas in need of further investigation, where more research is required to better understand the mechanisms of electrostatic interactions and aerial electroreception.

Bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) use information from surrounding electric fields to make foraging decisions. Electroreception in air, a nonconductive medium, is a recently discovered sensory capacity of insects, yet the sensory mechanisms remain elusive. Here, we investigate two putative electric field sensors: antennae and mechanosensory hairs. Examining their mechanical and neural response, we show that electric fields cause deflections in both antennae and hairs. Hairs respond with a greater median velocity, displacement, and angular displacement than antennae. Extracellular recordings from the antennae do not show any electrophysiological correlates to these mechanical deflections. In contrast, hair deflections in response to an electric field elicited neural activity. Mechanical deflections of both hairs and antennae increase with the electric charge carried by the bumblebee. From this evidence, we conclude that sensory hairs are a site of electroreception in the bumblebee.electric fields | bees | behavior | sensory biology

-We investigated the connection between foraging activity of honey bees (Apis mellifera ) and local weather conditions. We measured bee egress rate along with temperature, solar radiation, atmospheric pressure, humidity, rainfall, wind direction and speed. Data was collected from two hives, over the periods June-September 2013 (hive 1) and July-September 2014 (hive 2). We fitted an ordinary-least-squares generalised linear model to the data, using weather to predict bee egress rate. We found that 78% of the observed variation in bee activity was explained by variation in temperature and solar radiation. We discuss the potential application of this approach for continuous, remote monitoring of honey bee colonies with possible implications for early detection and prevention of hive abandonment disorders.bees / foraging / weather / monitoring / automation

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The apparent co-variation between ultra-weak light emission and growth pattern in coffee seedlings and the lunisolar gravity cycles corroborate those previously found in seedlings from other species. It is proposed here that such patterns may attenuate with time for older sprouts with slow development. These data suggest that new models considering both intra- and intercellular interactions are needed to explain the putative sensing and reaction of seedlings to the variations in the gravimetric tide. Here, a possible model is presented based on supracellular matrix interconnections.

Bees have been observed to detect and learn the presence of weak electric fields in various behavioural experiments in the lab. The electro-sensitivity of bumblebees has also been suggested to be important for pollination. However, the structure and function of electro-sensory organs are yet to be described. Bees, like other arthropods, are known to have evolved various mechanoreceptors. Antennae and hairs have mechanosensory functions and have been shown to respond to weak electric fields. Current proposals posit that hairs and antennae can act as electromechanical sensors. To investigate this hypothesis, the mechanical response of bumblebee hairs stimulated by an electric field was measured using microscanning laser Doppler vibrometry. Hair vibration velocity is shown to be proportional to charge triboelectrically deposited on the bee and the effect of polarisation charge is seen to be negligible. Hair motion due to acoustic stimuli is also measured and compared to hair electromechanical response. Preliminary results show that the electro-sensitivity of charged bee hairs is comparable to hair sensitivity to acoustic stimuli.

Bees and flowers have an intricate relationship which benefits both organisms. Plants provide nectar bees, in turn, distribute pollen to fertilize plants. To make pollination work, flowers need a mechanism to incentivize individual bees to visit only a single species of flower. Flowers, like modern advertising agencies, use multiple senses to create a floral 'brand' that is easily recognized. Size, smell, colour, touch, and even temperature are used to allow bees to differentiate between flower species. Recently, a new sense has been found that is usable by bees to differentiate flowers, an 'electric sense': they can identify flowers based only on the flower's electric field. This new sense provides a novel example of how flowers differentiate themselves to bees and has obvious implications for how bees and flowers interact with the electrical world around us. Bumble bees detect this electric field by using their body hairs, which bend in the presence of electric charge.a Corresponding