Snow-man
Active Member
Wow! Highly interesting. Thanks for the scientific lesson. So, Professor, instead of chopping them all to bits and pieces, what would be the best approach for a pilot in the same situation to help prevent an already in bad shape species to become instinct faster by unaware and un-entomologist Junior drone pilot like me?Hello Skydeep,
Thanks for your posting. This has happened to me several times now but with different bees.
I have seen at least a dozen postings now of bees attacking drones.
I'm an entomology professor at the University of Arizona here in Tucson.
I study pollination ecology and also native soltiary ground-nesting bees, their nesting and
mating biology. Long story short, three times now in the past several months, I've had my
Mavic2 Pro attacked by male and female bees in the genus Centris (C. pallida and C. caesalpiniea).
Sadly, the Mavic acted like a flying Cuisinart. Many bees chopped to bits.
It could be visual and acoustic due to sound pressure waves they might be detecting. I lost my
Mavic last month due to a signal disconnect in some treacherous badlands. Did not retrieve it.
I have recordings of the bee wingbeat frequency (166Hz) and the Mavic sound which as you
might imagine is not as clean with lots of white noise and higher level harmonics. Next year I
plan to do some careful tests to see if the bees are atrracted visually or acoustically. If you
look at the bee literature, bees have been thought to be deaf to airborne sounds except at
very close range (I'm talking a few centimeters not many meters from a drone AC).
Your situation: Likely that you were flying in/near a DCA. That is a Drone Congregation Area.
Honey bee males (drones) fly to specific geographic sites and rapidly fly about 30 to 100 ft.
high in circular patterns. Whenever they spot a small dark spot (thinking it is a virgin queen)
they pursue it and mate if they can. The drone honey bees have upward looking holoptic
compound eyes. That way they can see a honey bee queen flying above them and chase her.
Best,
Steve