Tiny antennae that record how bees navigate may help perfect steering for driverless cars and drones

They are not just cute and stripy, but devastatingly efficient when it comes to locating the best pollen-rich flowers. As a result, the humble bee is at the centre of a £4.8 million project to create drones and driverless cars. In a unusual experiment, scientists painstakingly stuck tiny radar transponders to hundreds of bumblebees and honey bees, to track them as they flew. Bees are famous in the animal world for their intelligence, even directing each other to delicious flowers using a'waggle dance'. To harness their navigational skills, researchers used radar to track bees' precise flight path as they buzzed over farmland in Hertfordshire Carefully avoiding painful stings, the researchers have also put bees in virtual reality chambers, then watched how their brains works as they navigate.