It is also clear that bees become charged with a weak electric charge when flying through the air. How this occurs is not clear however. There are two main theories why this happens. One is that it is a result of friction. The other is that the flying bee picks up positively charged ion particles (cations) from the air. Which one is true? Do both potential charging methods play a role? We do not know. What we do know is that since bees are quite small, they experience weak electrical fields much more profoundly than we do.

The static electric charge that builds up on the bee’s body while it flies greatly increases its pollen collecting efficiency.

Flowers are electrically connected to the earth and pick up a negative charge through electrostatic induction. Bees pick up a positive charge as they fly through the air. The bee’s body surface charge appears to facilitate pollination since flowers are negatively charged and bees are positively charged (Greggers et. al., 2013b). The attraction of pollen to bees due to their opposite polarity allows pollen to defy gravity, moving against the earth’s gravitational forces in order to stick to the surface of the bee and become lodged in its body hairs (Clarke et al., 2017).

Since each bee carries with it a small electrical charge, what happens when a large group of them swarm? A recent study suggests that honey bees contribute to atmospheric electricity in proportion to the size and density of the swarm that issues from a colony. Researchers calculated that the swarm had enough charge to affect the atmospheric electric field known as the potential gradient, which is the voltage difference between the earth’s surface and a point (often one meter) above it. The effect was proportional to the swarm density. Similar impacts can be observed in swarms of locusts, although their impact is much greater since locust swarms can cover hundreds of square miles and pack between 40-80 million locusts in less than half a square mile. The study authors hypothesize that insects can have similar effects on atmospheric electricity as weather events since at the ground level where they made their measurements; the strength of the honey bee swarm’s electric field was comparable to the kinds of changes in electric fields that we see during a thunderstorm (Hunting, 2022).