Where Do Sleeping Bees Spend the Night?

Is That a Bee Sleeping in My Garden?

Courtesy Allegra Marcell

It’s a question you might not have considered unless you’ve seen a bee, unmoving, nestled in the center of a flower. At that point, you might be prompted to ask: Do bees sleep? After all, plenty of beings in nature do — birds sleep, butterflies have a version of sleep, and, thankfully for your garden, rabbits and deer aren’t awake to chow down on your flowers all day and night. What about bees? Read on to learn what our experts say about how bees catch their winks.

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Do Bumblebees Sleep on Flowers?

Courtesy Leann Coberly

“At dusk I noticed bumblebees that appeared to be sleeping on my coneflowers (above). They didn’t stir even when I came close. Do bees sleep?” asks reader LeAnn Coberly.

Birds & Blooms experts Kenn and Kimberly Kaufman say, “Yes, you might see bees catching a few Z’s. Like other insects, they enter a resting phase that’s somewhat similar to the kind of sleep that we experience. Bumblebees, in particular, often rest overnight on flowers — especially lavender or members of the aster family, like coneflowers, cosmos and sunflowers. The ones you saw were more likely to be males, since the females usually go back to the nest at night.

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Why Bee Sleep Is Important

Courtesy Mary Jane Desing

In addition, as is the case with humans, quality of rest greatly impacts a bee’s life. Researchers from the university found that light from artificial sources like parking lots or floodlights disrupts the circadian rhythms for honeybees, which leads them to be less effective in communicating with each other and, therefore, less effective at pollination.

Less rest especially affects the “waggle dance,” a funny name for an essential honeybee behavior. The dance allows bees to communicate the location of food to each other — subpar waggle dancing can be detrimental to a hive’s health.

Bees Are More Active During the Day

Similarly to humans, bees are diurnal, which means they’re active during the day and rest at night. And, similarly to humans, factors like light, food availability, and even temperature affect the quality of their sleep (after all, we humans definitely don’t sleep as well if a room is too hot, or too cold). Queen bees’ sleep patterns are random, but worker and drone bees have more set sleep schedules.

Hilariously, in another similarity to humans, bees often clean themselves after they wake up — it’s the bee version of taking a shower, or brushing your teeth.

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About the Experts

Kenn and Kimberly Kaufman are the official bird experts for Birds & Blooms. They are the creators of the Kaufman Field Guide series and they lead birding trips all over the world.

Sources

• Ben’s Bees, “Do Bees Sleep? The Fascinating World of Bee Sleep“
• UC San Diego Today, “Sleep Is No Light Matter for Bees“
• University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, “Male Longhorned Bees“