Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

My job allows me to work from home a day or two per week, and I've been noticing outside of my work space window, a few bumble bees who are buzzing around a flower bush. These bees never seem to tire, toiling all day long. I did a little research as to ''if bees ever get tired,'' and I found two interesting articles (below) 

Bees have similar sleep cycles to us, as they tend to sleep during a night cycle for eight hours. I'm tempted to set up a surveillance camera near this flower bush to see where these bees have established a hive. So far, I can't seem to locate their hive, nearby. 

https://www.buzzaboutbees.net/do-bees-sleep.html

https://moralfibres.co.uk/how-to-revive-tired-bees/

Quote:In honey bees, there is some variance depending on the role within a colony. Forager bees – the older bees within the colony, are active during the day, but sleep at night back in the nest or bee hive. [...] Very young worker bees (whose duties include cleaning the cells), also sleep in the hive or nest, but they have no fixed pattern of sleep as the foragers do.

Since the younger, worker bees are largely confined to the hive itself and its potentially darker environment even during the day, I guess it makes sense that their sleep patterns would be more variable and less fixed than the foragers. Supposedly when older bees transit exclusively to the latter activity stage, they only live a week or less. Due to the "many risks and severe metabolic costs associated with foraging".

The life of bees...quite interesting. I've learned that 1/3 of our food supply comes from bee pollination. The things we take for granted, I tell ya.