Bees buzz long way home to hive

Bees are able to find their way home to their hive from more than 13km (eight miles) away, a research team has shown.

Researchers took 20,000 bees away from their hive at Newcastle University and then let them loose at other locations to see if they knew the way home.

The scientists put tiny tags on the bees' backs and used a webcam in their hive to record them returning home.

Bees are really important as they help plants grow but there are fewer of them in the UK than there used to be.

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Not all the bees made it back though, with one expert explaining: Don't forget that a lot of bees got killed by predators and hitting car windscreens."

Until this study it was thought bees only flew about 5km (three miles) from their hive when they were searching for food.

But some of these bees were dropped off at a garden centre some eight miles (13km) from their nest.