HONEYBEES DREAM THE SWEETEST DREAMS

Sweet dreams are made of this… honey, flowers, warm summer days and more… A new study suggests that honeybees not only sleep, but they dream! Just like we do!

Dream states during sleep serve an important function for humans, enabling us to process information gathered when we are awake and store the data in long-term memory. Apparently, dreams serve the same purpose for honeybees.

Humans and honeybees are both social species, communicating and working together to render a better life for their communities.

Over the last few years, a group of scientists have started to uncover why honeybees need to sleep and dream. It seems that resting periodically actually helps the productivity of the hive.

While bees have the reputation of being busy all the time, they have to sleep too in order to work most effectively. Similar to human circadian rhythm, honeybees sleep between 5 - 8 hours each night, resting while it’s too dark to forage for pollen and nectar.

Back in 1983, scientist Walter Kaiser first discovered that honeybees sleep. He observed that at night, bees’ legs would begin to flex to allow their heads to rest on the floor of the hive. Then their antennae would stop moving. And then, they fell over sideways, as if intoxicated, to enter a state of sleep. Many bees held each other's legs as they slept.

Kaiser's study was the first record of sleep in an invertebrate. It turns out many other, if not all, species sleep as well. According to Barrett Klein, a sleep biologist from the University of Wisconsin Wisconsin–La Crosse, "There's no universally-accepted exception."

When scientists experimented by keeping bees awake, preventing their sleep, the bees began to perform normal tasks poorly, just as humans do when they are sleep deprived.

Bees, like humans, are social animals. Communication and cooperation are critical to survival. Sleep-deprived bees cannot communicate properly. As a result, they cannot work well together to forage, locate, and transport pollen, wasting precious time and energy. The whole colony suffers.

Sleep-deprived honeybees have trouble orienting themselves, even in their own hives. They start to forget how to perform their normal activities.

We know that for humans, deep sleep (aka slow-wave sleep) is when dreams happen and memories are consolidated. Short-term memories are transferred to long-term memory. And learning is reinforced. And in a recent study, scientists from the Free University of Berlin, led by Randolf Menzel, found that the same is true for honeybees.

For both humans and honeybees, the previous day's activities are reactivated during dream states and stabilized so learning can be accessed in the future.

What might honeybees be dreaming about? A color, a fragrance, a taste sensation, a place where the flowers are the most beautiful? Whatever they might be, they are sure to be sweet dreams!

Read more about Beautiful Daydreams in A Re-Imagined Dream is Beautiful Now in Dreamland.

And check out more beautiful things happening now in BN Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact Daily Fix posts.

Want more stories like this? Sign up for our weekly BN Newsletter, Like us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr. Join our BeautifulNow Community and connect with the most beautiful things happening in the world right now!

Do you have amazing photos? Enter them in this week’s BN Photo Competition. We run new creative competitions every week! Now, it’s even easier to enter with the new BeautifulNow App!

Plus check out the rest of our App’s beautiful features. It’s free to download here.

IMAGE LIST:

1. Image: by Srikanth Vk. “Carpenter bee.”
2. Image: by Toshihiro Gamo. “Carpenter Bee on Cotton Rose Mallow.”
3. Image: by Marilylle Soveran. “Beautiful Blue.”
4. Image: by Jack. “Window Shopping.”
5. Image: by Theophilos Papadopoulos. “Spring Scene.”
6. Image: by Nathan Siemers. “North American Honeybee on top of a Dogwood flower.”
7. Image: by Lorenzo L. “A Bee Named Honey.”
8. Image: by Heartlover1717. “Morning Glories @ Magic Wings.”
9. Image: by John T Howard. “Honey bees!”
10. Image: by vintagecat. “The Bee Stopped to Rest.”
11. Image: by John. “Peony Picnic.”
12. Image: by Cheng I. “Purple BEE.”
13. Image: by Bhavna Sayana. “Stay away from mee Mr. Bee ...She said.”
14. Image: by Ian Boyd. “Colletes hederae.”
15. Image: by BRJ INC. “Bee on the Anther.”
16. Image: by BN App - Download now!
17. Image: by John Williams. “Dahlia.”