How’s Your City Doing? Ask the Honeybees.
Our neighborhood bees possess valuable information about a city’s health that could benefit everything from pathogen surveillance to environmental justice.
Honeybees pick up tiny particles as they navigate around plants, animals and other objects in their environment.
Photographer: Claudio Cavalensi/500px PrimeFor scientists studying the health of a city and its inhabitants, their most powerful tool may just be the honeybee.
That’s because when honeybees go foraging, they collect more than just pollen and nectar. As they navigate through their environment, microorganisms and other tiny particles can also cling to the bees’ fuzzy little bodies, which the pollinators then shed as they enter their hives.