Summary
While honeybees use magnetic fields as references to orient in space, there is no unequivocal evidence that honeybees use magnetic cues to orient in time. In this report, it is demonstrated that magnetic fields usually have no influence on the time sense of honeybees, and the bees' rhythmicity is not driven exclusively by exogenous factors. All the variations of the forager bees' behavior are explicable by an endogenous control of rhythmicity; differences are due to individually different periods of the forager bees and dependent on the season. The coincidence of curves calculated from the constellation of sun and moon and the behavior of bees is shown to be an artifact and not a causal relationship.
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Neumann, M.F. Is there any influence of magnetic or astrophysical fields on the circadian rhythm of honeybees?. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 23, 389–393 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00303713
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00303713