WINGS

For many years, people tried to understand animal flight using the aerodynamics of airplanes and helicopters, In the last 10 years, flight biologists have gained a remarkable amount of understanding by shifting to experiments with robots that are capable of flapping wings with the same freedom as the animals.

The scientists analysed pictures from hours of filming bees and mimicked the movements using robots with sensors for measuring forces.

Turns out bee flight mechanisms are more exotic than thought.
Honeybees have a rapid wing beat in contrast to the fruit fly that has one-eightieth the body size and flaps its wings 200 times each second, the much larger honeybee flaps its wings 230 times every second."
This was a surprise because as insects get smaller, their aerodynamic performance decreases and to compensate, they tend to flap their wings faster.
This was just for hovering, they also have to transfer pollen and nectar and carry large loads, sometimes as much as their body mass, for the rest of the colony.

In order to understand how bees carry such heavy cargo, the researchers forced the bees to fly in a small chamber filled with a mixture of oxygen and helium that is less dense than regular air. This required the bees to work harder to stay aloft and gave the scientists a chance to observe their compensation mechanisms for the additional toil.
The bees made up for the extra work by stretching out their wing stroke amplitude but did not adjust wingbeat frequency.
They work like racing cars, racing cars can reach higher revolutions per minute but enable the driver to go faster in higher gear. But like honeybees, they are inefficient.

The scientists said the findings could lead to a model for designing aircraft that could hover in place and carry loads for many purposes such as disaster surveillance after earthquakes and tsunamis. They are also pleased that a simple thing like bee flight can no longer be used as an example of science failing to explain a common phenomenon.