Precise, individualized foraging flights in honey bees revealed by multicopter drone-based tracking

Honey bees routinely fly hundreds or thousands of meters between their hive and established foraging locations [1-3]. To navigate these long distances, they are known to combine both landmark use [4-7] and path integration [8-11] and have been hypothesized to build a cognitive map [12-14]. Due to technical challenges inherent in tracking these small insects, obtaining three-dimensional, high-resolution measurements of individual navigational precision, and thus a detailed understanding of their strategies, has been difficult. Here, we utilize a novel multicopter drone-based tracking system [15] to measure the individual flight paths of honey bees in a structured agricultural landscape at unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution. Although bees could choose from multiple routes, we discovered that individual bees follow idiosyncratic paths with striking and repeatable precision. Flight path variability was highest over visually sparse regions and lowest near prominent proximal landmarks. Furthermore, individual strategies differed: some bees flew directly toward the hive before maneuvering around a specific tree, while others flew directly to a gap between a hedgerow and the tree. Thus, each animal varies in how it uses visual information and selects between behavioral strategies. The level of precision exhibited by their flight paths exceeds that reported in the waggle dance, implying that dance variability does not reflect a limit in the bees underlying spatial representation. Our results demonstrate the remarkable precision of individual bee navigation and illustrate the potential of this new drone-based tracking method to illuminate fine-scale behavioral mechanisms across a spectrum of honey bee ecology and cognition. HighlightsO_LIIndividual honey bees follow strikingly precise, idiosyncratic flight paths, revealing personalized strategies for navigating complex, obstacle-rich landscapes. C_LIO_LIVariability in individual bee flight paths was lower near conspicuous landmarks, but greater when further from such features, as a consequence variability in bee flights was not uniform along a route. C_LIO_LINavigational precision far exceeds waggle dance variability, showing that dance imprecision is not constrained by limits in spatial representation. C_LIO_LIMulticopter drone-based tracking method enables new investigations of 3D flight control and visual navigation in structurally complex realistic environments. C_LI