Wind and obstacle motion affect honeybee flight strategies in cluttered environments

Bees often forage in habitats with cluttered vegetation and unpredictable winds. Navigating obstacles in wind presents a challenge that may be exacerbated by wind-induced motions of vegetation. Although wind-blown vegetation is common in natural habitats, we know little about how bees’ strategies for flying through clutter are affected by obstacle motion and wind. We filmed honeybees, Apis mellifera, flying through obstacles in a flight tunnel with still air, headwinds or tailwinds. We tested how their ground speeds and centering behavior (trajectory relative to the midline between obstacles) changed when obstacles were moving vs. stationary, and how bees’ approach strategies affected flight outcome (successful transit vs. collision). We found that obstacle motion affects ground speed: bees flew slower when approaching moving vs. stationary obstacles in still air but tended to fly faster when approaching moving obstacles in head- or tailwinds. Bees in still air reduced their chances of colliding with obstacles (whether moving or stationary) by reducing ground speed - whereas flight outcomes in wind were not associated with ground speed, but rather with improvement in centering behavior during the approach. We hypothesize that in challenging flight situations (e.g., navigating moving obstacles in wind), bees may speed up to reduce the number of wing collisions that occur if they pass too close to an obstacle. Our results show that wind and obstacle motion can interact to affect flight strategies in unexpected ways, suggesting that wind-blown vegetation may have important effects on foraging behaviors and flight performance of bees in natural habitats.