Tests show queen bees can survive for as long as a week under water

Bees can survive under water for up to a week, scientists have found, after accidentally submerging some in a previous experiment.

A 2022 study looking at the impact of pesticides on queen bees hibernating underground went wrong when “an experimental oversight led to the inadvertent accumulation of water” on dormant bumblebee queens.

Condensation build-up in a fridge dripped into the tubes housing sleeping queens, leaving them submerged.

The scientists, from the University of Guelph in Canada, were surprised to find the mishap was not fatal, as many survived.

A follow-up experiment designed to specifically investigate this unexpected observation, which had never been seen before in bees, looked at the underwater survival in more detail.

The academics gathered 147 queens from a large lab colony of the common eastern bumblebee and they were all placed into an individual tube with damp soil.

Air holes were made in the lids and the tubes were kept in dark, cool conditions to mimic being underground.

A control group of 17 bees was kept in these dry tubes with no extra water added, and the rest were left to either float in an extra 20ml of water or were kept submerged.

Bees were left to float or kept underwater for eight hours, 24 hours or seven days, with 21 bees in each of the six flooding scenarios. Nine in 10 of the bees survived the submersion, the study found, including 17 of the 21 most intensely submerged bees that were plunged underwater for seven consecutive days.

Data also show that heavier and bigger bees were more likely to survive, and the researchers said non-queen bees would not be able to survive submersion.

The authors of the paper, published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters, speculate that the underwater survival ability could be a perk of how bees breathe.

Dr Sabrina Rondeau, the study author, told The Daily Telegraph: “Hibernating bumblebee queens have very low metabolism, which means that they also have low oxygen requirements. They do not need a lot of oxygen at all to survive. As such, they may be able to rely on the air left in their trachea (similar to lungs in humans).”

Other theories from the scientists suggest the survival could be down to the fact that bees breathe not through lungs but rather through tiny holes along their body that they could close while submerged.