Lightning is a giant electrical spark between Earth’s atmosphere and the ground, but what about thousands of tiny charges closer to the ground? A new study found that swarms of honey bees produce as much electricity as a thundercloud.
The study, published in the journal Science by researchers from the University of Bristol and the University of Reading, is part of a relatively new field of study known as electrical ecology, which examines electricity in biology from the level of the organism to the environment.
“We think about how animals can take in and process physical information from the environment. And so we’re always thinking about how physics affects biology, but it’s actually really nice to flip that now and say, ‘Well, now biology affects physics,'” explained study co-author Liam O ‘Reilly.
The first measurement was made purely by chance when a hive was overcrowded and a swarm and its queen moved across an electric field mill near the hive to measure honey bees.
“We’ve seen an increase of about a thousand volts per meter in our measurements,” O’Reilly said. “We knew from our previous data and from previous studies that flying insects, including bees, carry a charge.”
You already knew that bees are individually charged with static electricity, and as they fly through the air they lose electrons and become positively charged.
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“It makes sense that a swarm, a group of these charged individuals, would provide a larger charge and then affect the local electric field,” he said.
The researchers determined the insects’ electrical charge contribution to atmospheric electricity, which depended on how many insects were tightly packed in a swarm, or its density.
“We thought, ‘Well, that’s really interesting, but what other insects are swarming?’ said O’Reilly.
A picture taken on Feb. 9, 2021 shows a swarm of desert locusts covering the ground in Meru, Kenya. (Photo by Yasuyoshi CHIBA/AFP) (Photo by YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP via Getty Images)
The team would wait another year before bees swarm again to take another measurement, but they have since measured locusts, peacock butterflies and cinnabar moths.
The story goes on
When you think of a swarm, locusts, best known for “biblical” swarming events that destroy crops and wreak havoc, are possibly the most well-known swarming insects in history.
“Some of the locust swarms are about 460 square miles, with 40 to 80 million locusts in less than half a square mile. So it’s a pretty big event,” O’Reilly said.
For ethical reasons, the research team did not want to create a swarm of locusts, so these measurements were made in a laboratory setting using wind tunnels, measuring the individual charges of the insects and then averaging the values. Using already available density data from locust swarms, the researchers developed a charge density measurement similar to that used by atmospheric scientists to describe clouds and dust storms.
“We start with this kind of random measurement and then get a little bit more information by setting up and getting the swarm density and then getting that correlation. And then we can compare that to meteorological phenomena through very simple modeling,” said O’Reilly.
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Using instruments that measure meteorological conditions, including electric field mills and Faraday buckets, the group was able to compare these swarms to clouds and other weather phenomena.
The researchers compared the insect swarm charges to fair weather clouds, thunderclouds and electrified dust storms. They found that swarms of locusts can generate enough charge to exceed electrical storm clouds.
Meanwhile, much lower-density moths and butterflies don’t produce significant sources of atmospheric charge, but the study says the insects could be comparable to fair-weather clouds in some extreme swarming events.
O’Reilly emphasizes that these flying insects cannot create weather events such as lightning.
“Insect swarms accumulate some static charge, and this has a density-dependent effect on the local atmospheric electric field, and the extent to which it has this effect is similar to meteorological phenomena such as clouds or dust storms,” O’Reilly said.
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However, before you worry about being tapped by a honey bee swarm, there is one important difference to consider: distance and magnitude.
“This is, for example, a small swarm of honey bees that is very close to the sensor compared to a large thundercloud perhaps miles away,” O’Reilly pointed out.
The lab group hopes to collect more swarm measurements, including locusts, to learn how they affect atmospheric electricity measurements.
