A surprisingly large number and diversity of bee species – 74 out of 96 tested – have magnetic properties, according to research my colleagues and I recently published in the journal Science Advances.

Some animals are able to use iron-based magnetic compounds such as magnetite to detect and navigate via the Earth’s magnetic field – a sense called magnetoreception. We considered magnetism in the insects we tested to be a proxy for which species might be magnetoreceptive.

For decades, biologists have known that social, cavity-nesting honeybees exhibit magnetoreception. Most researchers assumed that this internal compass was tied to living in a colony; honeybees communicate the location of floral resources to other colony members through a dance that indicates direction relative to the position of the Sun and the geomagnetic field.

Our study had two goals: to compare magnetism between bee species that live in groups versus on their own, and to track down the evolutionary origin of magnetoreception in bees.

Finding magnetism........

© The Conversation