The on-screen text that opens 2007’s “Bee Movie” — a cult classic — nods to an old, persistent myth: the idea that bees shouldn’t be able to fly. It states:
“According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyway. Because bees don’t care what humans think is impossible.”
Entertaining? Absolutely. Scientifically accurate? Not even close. Bees, like other insects with wings, don’t defy the laws of aviation or physics; they exploit them.
Why, then, do so many people think that bees shouldn’t be able to fly? Let’s unpack that myth and explore the complex forces that help insects take to the skies.
To understand how insects fly, we first need to look at birds and bats — the only other animals capable of true, powered flight.
Birds and bats achieve lift, in part, using cambered wings: curved wings that guide air to move faster over the top, reducing pressure and creating lift. Airplanes use this same basic design principle to get off the ground.
Insect wings, however, are more like flat plates than curved airplane wings. So, how can insects fly if they can’t take advantage of these same smooth, fixed-wing aerodynamics?
Insect Flight Deemed “Impossible”
This question really tripped up early entomologists, who believed insect wings must behave like a miniature version of a plane’s fixed airfoils. In the 1930s, French entomologist Antoine Magnan applied the laws of air resistance to insects and deemed their flight “impossible.” (This is the likely origin of the myth that bees defy the laws of physics.)
The truth: Insects have had roughly 400 million years to fine-tune flight, giving them time to evolve strategies that bats, birds and even airplanes simply don’t use.
Simply put, insects fly by flapping their wings. When an insect sweeps its wings back and forth, it accelerates air downward, and by Newton’s third law of motion (every action has an equal and opposite reaction), that downward push on the air creates an upward force called lift.
With relatively small wings and heavy bodies, bees are a great example of efficient insect flight. Here’s how they do it:
This type of flight is energy-intensive, which helps explain why bees are constantly foraging for high-energy nectar.
So how do small insect wings produce such strong forces?
Because the leading-edge vortex stays attached for much of the stroke, it acts like a lift amplifier, helping insects stay airborne on wings that might otherwise seem too small.
Early researchers like Magnan struggled with insect flight because they believed that insect wings behaved like the fixed wings of an airplane, where high angles of attack usually cause a stall. In reality, flying insects are more like tiny helicopters … flying on tiny hurricanes.
As you might expect, all this wing-flapping takes some serious muscle. Insects generally need at least 12 to 16% of their body mass in flight muscle just to get off the ground. In high-performance fliers, flight muscles can make up 55 to 65% of total body mass: more than half their entire body weight. The more flight muscle an insect has, the stronger, longer or more agile its flight becomes.
Maintaining that muscle is costly, though. Some insects can partially break down their flight muscles when they no longer need to fly, redirecting energy and resources to other needs in response to environmental conditions like population density or food availability.
Here are a few key facts about insect flight to keep in mind:
Not long ago, mysteries like “how bees fly” seemed unsolvable with the tools scientists had. Today, entomologists use high-speed video, robotic wings and sophisticated computer models to peel back the curtain on how insects operate in the air and on the ground.
New discoveries are being made every day, with entomologists studying how climate change affects insect behavior, how to better protect pollinators and how insects communicate. If these mysteries interest you, it might be time to consider a career in entomology.
Entomologists are a lot like you. They love anything with six or more legs and spend their time learning all about insects and other arthropods. The difference is that they get paid for it.
What’s separating you from them? A formal entomology education.
The University of Florida offers 100% online entomology programs designed to help enthusiasts like you turn a love of insects into a rewarding career. Our online medical entomology master’s degree and graduate certificate programs provide key skills needed to pursue careers in public health, research, academia and other medical-entomology-related areas.
Interested? Explore our 100% online entomology programs to see everything they can offer you, then submit your application when you’re ready. Who knows what you’ll discover once you take flight.
Sources:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336312526_Insect_flight_explained_according_to_Newtonian_physics
https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/living-world/2018/tricks-and-traits-let-insects-take-flight
https://www.businessinsider.com/bees-cant-fly-scientifically-incorrect-2017-12
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