Forget the Theory; Just Enjoy the Flight

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The bee, buzzing by at 40 miles an hour, ignores all our best aerodynamic principles. It manages bursts of speed, which when scaled up, are equivalent to an airliner flying at 160,000 kilometres an hour! Although the bee with its small wings and stocky body shows no sign of streamlining, it’s up there with the world’s best stunt flyers.

The latest attempts to understand insect flight use robot models of insect wings and measure the currents generated by their beating. One conclusion is clear: we still don’t understand how bees manage to take off!

Insect wings are incredibly complicated, beating thousands of times a minute. One theory is that the beating wing tips create tiny whirlpools of air along the front edge of the wing. These cause regions of low pressure, which create lift to draw the insect upwards. A similar effect happens along the sweptback wings of supersonic aircraft.

However, even for the fixed aircraft wing, the latest studies indicate that the shape of the wing is not the most important thing. A major factor is the upward tilt of the wing, which forces air down, thus generating an equal and opposite force upwards. It seems that the simple laws of Isaac Newton are more important than complicated flow theories in explaining the ability to fly.

So next time a bee buzzes by, remember that knowing how to fly is less important than enjoying the flight.