'Headbanging' Bees

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Bees bang heads at rate of 350 times per second: Bees, not Metallica fans - Scientist discovered a species of bees that bang their heads and they don’t even need head-banging music to do it. These bees bang heads for a really good reason and they do it at an unbelievable rate of 350 times a second. This is all done for the usually time-consuming task of spreading pollen.

Researchers caught these Australian bees during their head-banging act on video and the energy expelled by the Australian blue-banded bee in a matter of seconds will leave you awestruck. There is nothing that a human can do 350 times per second, so they are one up on the human race!

According to Mashable on December 15, the researchers at Adelaide University discovered that the bee bangs its head into the flower to release the pollen into the air and this action allows the bee to spend less time per flower. This discovery leads to a better understanding of crop pollination and can help develop better crop pollination techniques.

This also indicates that the blue-banded bee is a very efficient pollinator and these type of bees need fewer bees per hectare, which was new information released in a statement by native bee expert Dr Katja Hogendoorn from the University of Adelaide. The research is headed to the journal of Arthropod-Plant Interactions and while you won’t find this on the best-seller list, you have to admit this is interesting.

Dr Hogendoorn and her colleagues found the blue-banded bee gets the pollen by banging its head on the flower's anthers at a staggering 350 times a second, according to ABC News. Hogendoorn's colleague, Dr Sridhar Ravi.from RMIT University, said: "When you translate that to acceleration, it's almost insane levels, among the highest we've noted in the animal kingdom."

It is amazing to see the bee holding the flower with its legs while vibrating its thorax muscles. The bee then somehow transfers these vibrations to its head. Again, it's all in the beat! You can check out the bee banging its head in the video above.

Next time you are in an Australian garden and you think you hear a fast little beat going on, it may be those head-banging bees. To get a human to bang their head on purpose, this usually requires some loud Metallica music and an old fashion mosh pit. These bees have a reason to bang their heads besides a good beat! They are doing it because nature calls.