Forager honeybees have a demanding job: Searching for nectar, honeydew and pollen, they permanently commute between beehive and flower meadow. Their circadian clock tells them among others when to arrive in time for the plant to open its flowers and when to rest because potential food sources are "closed".

The circadian clock also helps passing information about good foraging sites to other bees. Because the insects rely on the sun as reference point in navigation, the clock is used at a later time to calculate the flight route.

Nurse bees, too, do a highly strenuous job. This is not because they are out and about a lot, quite the contrary: It is the job of the young honeybee to feed older larvae with a jelly consisting of pollen and honey - non-stop. While they pursue their activities, the bees do not follow a 24-hour rhythm with alternating phases of rest and activity.

Publication in Open Biology

An international team of scientists from Israel, Germany and New Zeeland have looked into several interesting questions including how the circadian clocks of foraging bees and nurse bees work, which molecular mechanisms are responsible for their different behaviour and how the bee's clock network is structured.