Bees stopped buzzing during total solar eclipse | Earth

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While millions of Americans were taking a break from their daily routine for the total solar eclipse of August 21, 2017, they might not have noticed a similar phenomenon occurring nearby: on the path of totality, the bees have also broken their daily routine.

To study the influence of the solar eclipse on the behavior of bees, researchers from the University of Missouri organized a team of citizen scientists and elementary school classrooms in order to set up acoustic monitoring stations in order to listen to the buzz – or the absence of bees – bees during the 2017 eclipse. The results, published on October 10, 2018 in the peer reviewed journal Annals of the Entomological Society of America, were clear and consistent across the country: bees stopped flying during the period of total solar eclipse.

Candace Galen is a professor of biological sciences at the University of Missouri and a principal investigator of the study. She said in a statement:

We expected, based on some reports in the literature, that the activity of the bees would drop as the light would drop during the eclipse and reach a minimum at all. But, we did not expect the change to be so abrupt, that the bees continue to fly to the totality and then only to stop completely. It was like "turning off the lights" at the summer camp! This surprised us.

Galen said that, as the anticipation rose for the eclipse,

… It seemed that everyone and his dog were asking me what the animals would do during a total eclipse.

However, few formal studies have examined the behavior of insects, especially during a solar eclipse, and none have examined bees. Meanwhile, Galen and his colleagues had recently field-tested a system to track bee pollination remotely by listening to the buzzing sound of their flights as they record. Galen said:

It seemed like the ideal solution. The tiny microphones and temperature sensors could be placed near the flowers hours before the eclipse, leaving us free to put on our fancy glasses and enjoy the show.

The project mobilized more than 400 participants – scientists, members of the public, teachers and elementary students – to set up 16 monitoring stations on the totality trail in Oregon, Idaho and Missouri. At each location, small USB microphones were hung from lanyards near pollinated bee flowers, away from pedestrians and vehicles. In some places, light and temperature data were also captured. The participants then sent the devices to Galen's laboratory, where the recordings were compared to eclipse periods at each site and analyzed to determine the number and duration of bee buzzing.

Data showed that bees remained active during the partial eclipse phases before and after all, but essentially stopped flying during the entire period. Only one buzz was recorded in all 16 monitoring sites. However, shortly before and shortly after the whole, the duration of bee flights tends to be longer than at the beginning of the phase preceding the totality and late after it. Galen and his colleagues interpret these longer flight times as an indicator of slower flight under reduced lighting or, possibly, returning bees to their nest.

Another total solar eclipse in North America is not far off: April 8, 2024. Galen says his team is working to improve its audio analysis software to distinguish flights made by bees in search of food when they leave or return to their colonies. Thus prepared, she hopes to answer the question of whether bees return home when the "lights go out" in 2024.

Bottom Line: A study indicates that bees have stopped flying during the total sun eclipse of August 2017.

Source: The pollination of the dark side: acoustic monitoring reveals the impacts of a total solar eclipse on flight behavior and activity schedule of bees in search of food

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