For the luckiest people in the world, summer means holidays. And holidays mean regular naps. It’s true for humans, but also bees as it turns out who also make the most of their little naps
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You can see the surprising photos that were taken by photographer Joe Neely in the video just above. In these photos, you can see two specimens of a very particular species of bees in the middle of a nap. This species of bee is called Diadasia diminuta.
Most commonly found on the American continent, these bees tend to sleep in the pollen inside certain flowers, particularly Sphaeralcea. Just like all other species of bees, when they reach adulthood, they sleep between 30 minutes to an hour every night, in micro-nap blocks of 15 to 30 seconds.
What’s even more surprising is that just like sleep deprivation can have serious consequences for the human body, it can for the bodies of hymenopterans and other insects as well.
Health consequences
The University of Florida realised that in fire ants for example, the Queens sleep a lot more and live a lot longer than the workers. In a study carried out in 2009, scientists also noted that the Queens rest 90 times a day in 6-minute blocks, equating to a total of 9 hours of sleep per day.
However, the workers randomly take one-minute naps, 250 times a day, equating to 5 hours of sleep in total. The goal is to ensure a constantly alternating presence of bees, so that 80% of the colony is active at any given moment.
The consequence of this routine is that workers only live for one year, while the Queen can live up to 6 years.
