She told Animal Planet News that the streaks are even visible to humans; she has seen them by walking into bee swarms. The fastest streakers fly at a rate of around 3.3 feet per second.
Funded by the Australian Academy of Sciences, Beekman and her colleagues studied honeybee swarms at Cornell University in New York. Bees do secrete pheromones that other bees can smell, so the researchers sealed these odor-releasing glands on the test bees to see if that would prevent the swarm from finding its way.
In the spring, large bee colonies of around 20,000 to 30,000 bees usually divide into two groups. One stays at home with a daughter of the queen, who then becomes queen. The original queen and the rest of the bees then leave in a massive cloud to form a new colony.
Scout bees, which comprise about five percent of the swarm, negotiate among themselves via dance communication as to where the new home will be located.
Beekman and her team photographed such bee swarms on the move. The sealed glands did not deter the scouts, which seem to operate as independent agents once the swarm takes flight.
"They (the streaker scouts) do not seem to move en masse," she said. "Instead, we think that an individual flies over the swarm, exits the swarm and then either waits for the swarm to catch up again or circles back to re-enter the swarm from behind. By not flying en masse, the scouts ensure that there will always be bees streaking and thus guiding the swarm."
Iain Couzin is a Royal Society university research fellow at the University of Oxford and an expert on collective behavior of ant, bee and locust swarms, fish schools, bird flocks, and even human crowds.
He told Animal Planet News, "Understanding how animals communicate is a fascinating topic and honeybee migration is a beautiful example of how a few informed individuals (scouts) can guide a large number of naive individuals."
Couzin suggested that other insects and animals could benefit from a similar system.
He said, "Honeybee migrations provide an important insight into how relatively simple organisms can communicate collectively, creating a type of swarm intelligence."
