The researchers tested bees at the Australian university's All-Weather Bee Flight Facility, a large climate-controlled greenhouse.
I loved the evocation of bee flight: the foragers like WWI ace pilots, roaring off the landing stage, dodging disaster on every mission; selfless and fantastically brave.
The research team is still in the process of studying the patterns of bee flight.
In an ideal weather year, that could be due to bee flight hours and a lack of pollination.
High-speed x-ray imaging of bee flight muscle reveals that stretch-activated myosin deformation drives high-frequency wing beats.
Beekeepers in Italy and France also blame another neonicotinoid, thiamethoxam, produced by Syngenta, for killing their bees and studies have shown how bees' flight could be adversely affected by the absorption of very low doses.
"We also use radio tracking to follow each bees' flight path," explains Dr Raine.
They are investigating how the virus-spreading varroa mite and neonicotinoids, one of the most widely-used pesticides in the world, both affect bees' flight.
After testing the bees' flight stability and maneuverability in windy and nonwindy conditions, researchers found that bees carrying a pollen load are more stable, but less able to maneuver in strong winds, whereas bees carrying a nectar load are less stable but better able to maneuver.
All tags carried a unique 64 bit number, which allowed us to individually track the experimental bees' flight behavior.
