Eye of the Bee-holder

You may have heard the phrase, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," but have you ever wondered what beauty looks like through the eyes of a bee? The honeybee has five astonishing eyes to take in the wonderful world around it! Honeybees have three eyes on the top of its head. These eyes are called simple eyes as they sense the light around the bees. The other two eyes are on the sides of the honeybee's head and are called compound eyes. These eyes are used to detect patterns and shapes the bee might need to see such as plants.

Waggle Dance the honeybees use to communicate

Honeybees use their amazing eyes to see different colors! They can see more colors on the purple end of the color spectrum than humans can! The reason for this is so honeybees can find flowers with the sweetest nectar. Honeybees are a lot like humans in that they have favorite colors. Honeybees use the color of the flower to be able to sense the sweetness of the nectar. Many times, honeybees will go to the sweetest nectar flowers before going to the rest of the flowers around.

Once the honeybee finds the flower, they go back to the hive to tell the rest of the forage worker bees where to go! Unfortunately, honeybees don't have GPS that they plug the coordinates into. What they do to direct everyone to the flowers is dance instead! The honeybees communicate by doing the waggle dance. This is where the honeybees will go back to their hive and run around in a figure 8 to communicate with the bees. Directions are determined based on the direction the honeybee is facing and the angle in relation to the sun! It's not quite a GPS system like we use, but a very unique way honeybees communicate with each other!