Bees 'Buzz' in More Ways Than You Might Think

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 13 September 2023

⏱️ 6 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A honeybee swarm has as much electric charge as a thundercloud, and the insects’ mass movements in the atmosphere might even have some influence on the weather. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, science quickly listeners, this is Jeff Davisio, executive producer of the show.
0:10.1	The whole podcast team is out in the field, so while we're away, we're bringing back
0:13.4	a few amazing oldies from the archive.
0:16.2	Today, we have a show on a piece of research so electrifying we had to reanimate it.
0:21.8	Producer Shayla Love brings us a story about research that might change the way you look
0:24.7	at bees forever.
0:27.0	Bees, as we know, buzz.
0:29.6	But they're also buzzing with electricity.
0:32.3	Get a lot of them together in the air, and the mass effect of their electric flight
0:35.7	could rival the charge in a thunderstorm cloud.
0:38.9	Also, if you cover a car battery with 50 million, million bees, you could jumpstart it.
0:45.2	Real facts.
0:47.1	The episode first aired on November 15th, 2022, when we were still called 60-second
0:51.2	science memories, enjoy.
1:04.0	This is scientific American 60-second science.
1:06.7	I'm Shayla Love.
1:12.2	When you hear a bee buzzing along, visiting a flower, you're hearing the movement of air
1:16.4	made by the fluttering of its wings.
1:18.4	But it turns out that bees are buzzing in more than one way.
1:24.5	I first saw this when I saw a bumblebee land on an electrode I was using, and I saw a real change
1:31.2	in the measurement.
1:32.4	And I thought, this is a charged thing.
	...

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