Honeybees can find familiar flowers and return to their hive on cloudy days even when they cannot see the Sun. They combine learned information about the surroundings and the Sun’s usual path with other visual cues. Cloudy weather does not switch off their navigation—but strong wind, cold or rain can make flying difficult enough that many bees stay home.
What helps a bee recognize its way home?
A forager learns the area around her hive during orientation flights. Nearby trees, field edges, buildings and the appearance of the hive entrance can become familiar landmarks. On later trips she can use what she has learned to navigate the return journey, rather than treating each flower visit as an entirely new trip.
Scientists have also demonstrated that honeybees can estimate where the Sun should be at a particular time even when clouds hide it. Their internal time sense and experience with the Sun’s daily course provide a valuable backup for orientation.
What the hive entrance looks like
Foragers returning to a hive have a recognizable landing area and entrance to locate. In the photograph below, workers are clustered around the long entrance slot above a brightly painted landing board. The sunny-day photograph illustrates the destination that returning workers learn; it is not a photograph of bees navigating in cloud cover.
How can bees use the Sun when it is hidden?
In a classic 1981 Science study of honeybee orientation on cloudy days, researchers tested competing explanations: whether bees sensed hidden celestial light, used a magnetic compass or relied on learned information. The experiments showed that memory of the Sun’s daily movement relative to local landmarks provided a navigation backup.
Additional 1994 research on how bees learn the Sun’s course found that bees with only limited experience observing the Sun still made time-dependent estimates on a cloudy test day. This is evidence for a remarkable combination of learning and built-in orientation abilities; it is not evidence that bees literally see the Sun through solid clouds.
What about polarized light?
Light scattered across a clear or partly cloudy sky has patterns of polarization that many human eyes cannot directly detect. Honeybees can use these sky patterns as compass information when they are available. The pattern may be accessible through parts of the sky even when the Sun’s disk is obscured, but a completely overcast sky is not guaranteed to provide a useful polarization compass.
Controlled experiments published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B showed that honeybees can obtain directional information from polarized light during flight and communicate aspects of it in their dances. Navigation is therefore not a choice between only memory and only polarized light; different cues can be useful in different conditions.
Can bees still perform a waggle dance when it is cloudy?
Yes. Foragers that know a profitable food source can communicate a direction to other workers through their waggle dance, even when the Sun is obscured. The orientation of the dance is related to the expected direction of the Sun and the location of food. A worker reading that signal does not need bright sunshine shining into the hive.
Cloudy skies and stormy weather are different
A warm, dry but overcast afternoon may offer reasonable foraging conditions. Heavy rain wets wings and flowers, low temperatures can hinder flight, and gusty winds make returning difficult. Bees often reduce flying or remain in the colony during harsh weather. That behavior is about the cost and safety of flight, not simply a failure of their navigation system.
Frequently asked questions
Do bees use GPS or the Earth’s magnetic field?
Bees do not use human GPS satellites. Their navigation combines visual landmarks, celestial information, learning and time-based orientation; magnetic sensitivity has also been studied, but it is misleading to say a magnetic compass is the sole explanation for successful flights on cloudy days.
Will a bee get lost if a cloud covers the Sun?
Not necessarily. Familiar landmarks and learned compass information let many foragers continue. Newly displaced bees, unfamiliar terrain or difficult weather can make navigation much harder.
Do bees recognize the color of their hive?
Honeybees can distinguish many colors and visual patterns, though their color vision differs from ours. A hive’s position, surrounding features and entrance appearance can contribute to recognition; its paint color alone is not a guarantee against drifting into a neighboring colony.
More about bee communication
Read how the waggle dance tells bees which direction to fly and how honeybees carry pollen home on their hind legs.
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