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| When a colony of honeybees relocates to a new nest site, less than 5% of the bees (the scout bees) know the location of the new nest. Nevertheless, the small minority of informed bees manages to provide guidance to the rest and the entire swarm is able to fly to the new nest intact. The streaker bee hypothesis, one of the several theories proposed to explain the guidance mechanism in bee swarms, seems to be supported by recent experimental observations. Originally proposed by Lindauer in 1955, the theory suggests that the informed bees make high-speed flights through the swarm in the direction of the new nest, hence conspicuously pointing to the desired direction of travel. Once they reach the front of the swarm, they return at low speeds to the back, by flying along the edges of the swarm, where they are less visible to the rest of the bees. This work presents a mathematical model of flight guidance in bee swarms based on the streaker bee hypothesis. Numerical experiments, parameter studies and comparison with experimental data will be presented. |
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