The headline just appeared :
"ScienceDaily: Space & Time News
A break from the buzz: Bees go silent during total solar eclipse
Posted: 10 Oct 2018 07:55 AM PDT
In an unprecedented study of a solar eclipse's influence on bee behavior, researchers organized citizen scientists and elementary school classrooms to set up acoustic monitoring stations to listen in on bees' buzzing -- or lack thereof -- as the August 2017 total solar eclipse passed over North America. The results were clear and consistent at locations across the United States: Bees stopped flying during the period of total solar eclipse. "
This observation would seem to suggest that as global warming has progressed, and still does, then increasing days of cloud cover will reduce bee activity. Also that other pollinating insects may be involved and negatively impact on the human food chain. Not to mention arthropod food species predated by nesting birds. Intra-arthropod food chains may also likely be affected negatively.
These effects, if they occur, would seem most likely to be experienced during early growth seasons when cold and warm humid air masses will most frequently collide over areas of food production, and will have increased in the past 150 years and will continue to do so. Their effects upon human food supply will become immense as our global capacity to produce food drops below the global demand for it, and will proceed exponentially to a cube function due to the volumetric characteristic of increasing humidity.
Qu: Are there any bee studies which support the above proposition in relation to annual cloud cover variation bees, pollination, their population and related food yields?
The observation referred to in the headline was perhaps simplistic, in that it might lead some to imagine that it is the loss of radiation visible to the human eye which translates into suppressed appian activity, or that of other insects too. It is well established that the sense of sight, and capacity to navigate and find food, of different insects species involves a wider range of ranges of frequencies than humans rely upon. Since many parts of the emf spectrum may be selectively absorbed by atmospheric pollutant gases, vapours and aerosols the distribution of which are also likely to experience, though to us invisibly so, local variations just as does cloud cover then the true complexity and perhaps previously unsuspected breadth and depth of the negative potential of the real problem can be fully appreciated.
The consequence of this fact leads one to a generalisation of the proposal above to include all key species, species by species, and a generalisation of the question to include studies of all important pollinators.. flies, wasps and so on in relation to all possible human, and natural, atmospheric pollutants, constituents and chemically interacting derivative products.
Dear collègue,
During a solar eclipse period the température of air shoot down;
and naturelly all insectes, inclus Bees, stopped flying as in a night.
The activity of Bees not can be reduced, if the global warming has progressed.
Best regards,
MTT
Marpha Telepova-Texier
Thank you for this straightforward explanation. Though a full solar eclipse does simulate night-time for a period of time, 20 minutes or so. Cooler air temperatures are tolerated to some extent and are ameliorated by ground radiation, higher humidity also raises the thermal capacity of the air. It is not my field, and it would seem that the 'experiment' over North America was predominantly a stunt to encourage school science. I wonder if that can justify bad science? Rob
The problem with more cloud cover due to higher precipitation in some areas as a consequence of warming would be that this does result in local temperature drops and navigational obstacles for pollinating insects that are hive based. Persistent periods of inhibited foraging and navigational obstacles can be imagined to increase incidence of hive starvation... even if this results in desultory activity levels, inside the hive this can result in reduced ventilation in times of high humidity and promote colonisation of the hive by insect pathogens. An effect that one might argue farmers have been seeing evidence of knock-on effects of this sort for the past 2 decades.
Dear Robin Edward Jarvis ,
Insects are exothermic (cold blooded organisms). they cannot produce their own body heat so they have to absorb the heat from the surroundings. Bee (Hymenoptera) are active during the day time. This is so because as the Sun rises the surrounding temperature increases and the insects utilize this heat energy to maintain their optimum body physiology.
Coming to the point of solar eclipse, the amount light reaching Earths surface and heating is reduced, thus low atmospheric temperature. Hence reduced activity of the Bee as they cannot maintain their body temperature. The Bee has to raise its body temperature it should utilize its stored energy into mechanical energy by wing flattering inter converting to heat energy. If it does so then there would be no energy left to fly for collection of food.
Humidity: increase in humidity leads to more precipitation of water molecules. The Bee hive starts absorbing more of water molecules which softens the hive material leading to the growth of fungus / bacteria or attack of parasitic insects, leading to the death of Bee larvae.
Effect on Navigation: Bee, on the head there are 3 simple eyes along with 2 compound eyes. Simple eyes also called Ocelli are used to assist Bees with Sun orientation so that they can navigate during the day. So during the Solar eclipse the Bees might find difficult to navigate, thus reduced activity.
Kiran Vati K
Thank you so much for your thoughtful and detailed answer. Together with Marpha, you have confirmed my initial concerns. The implication is that those populations who have a high reliance upon insect pollinated food crops, growing and consuming them, are likely to be seriously affected by increasingly unstable weather patterns in their growing areas as total atmospheric energy increases. It needs a climatologist and an agricultural economist added to our small panel to answer the question "Which crops, which consumers and how soon?' ... and a political scientist to identify the governments and agencies who need to know what they are really facing and how soon.
They will need to begin planning how they will meet the challenge, the alliances they need to develop and the 'lobbying' of those that are amongst the 'significantly disinterested' and their electorates to ensure that they all have time to start their inevitable adaptations. If 'they' do not do so, then 'they' will soon lose their legitimacy within their respective domains... and the constituencies of supporters upon whom they depend for their present positions, and upon whose value producing work and effort their own social and political positions derive international significance and regard.
During sunny periods bees (aother black objects) are warmed by incident radiation and can reach temperatures well above air temperature. Especially for larger bees, flight depends on a high thoracic temperature. So most bees are inactive during periods of cloud cover, unless the ambient temperature is high.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Biological Science
- Zoology
- Invertebrate Zoology
- Arthropods