GIANT honeybees may be genetically guided back to their old haunts. Two groups of researchers have found that migrating swarms of the bees return each year to the same trees to build their nests, even though all the old scouts that decided where to set up home have died in the intervening seasons.
“The results are wonderful. The academic community will be delighted,” says Justin Schmidt, a research entomologist at the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson, Arizona. The findings are especially surprising because giant honeybees, Apis dorsata, migrate enormous distances in search of food. Studies in Sri…
