Bee Vs. Car: Who Gets More Miles Per Gallon?
Flight Efficiency of a Bee = .5 mg Per 1 km
So Volkswagen has this new car – the prototype was shown at the Frankfurt Motor Show a few months ago – that will get an estimated 170 miles per gallon.
Give this car a drink of gas and it will go 416 miles without a stop!
The accomplishment here is a diesel engine that's small and powerful, and set in a very light frame. The "L1," as it's called, is very little, weighing approximately 837 pounds with a 2.6-gallon fuel tank.
German engineers were justly proud. This is, the company claims, a level of fuel efficiency never seen before in the auto world.
But that's just for cars. We suggest that Germany's proud engineers take picnic baskets to the nearest springtime hill and meet their energy-efficient masters: honeybees.
We don't mean super-bees or some mutant variety. It turns out an ordinary honeybee can convert fuel with an efficiency that should intrigue (and humble) the wizards at Volkswagen.
So VW, Take Note:
In 1957, Canadian scientist Brian Hocking wondered, how far could a bee travel on a gallon of honey? Bees are too small to carry a gallon of anything, but Hocking came up with a way to calculate Bee Miles Per Gallon.
The Experiment
Experimenters take a bee, give it all the honey it can eat and then tether it to a pole. (This neither harms nor seems to disturb the bee.) It then flies round and round until, basically, it runs out of fuel. The pole measures the distance flown by the rotating bee. Because the experimenter now knows how far a bee can travel on a bee-belly of fuel, you scale up to imagine how far it would go if it had a gallon-sized belly. That's how you calculate Bee Miles Per Gallon.
Because Hocking is no longer alive, we took his data and invited Arizona bee scholar Stephen Buchmann to recreate the experiment.
Buchmann calls bees "the ultimate hybrid mini-vehicles." He says millions of years of evolution have produced muscles across the animal kingdom that are consistently more energy efficient than even the best human-built machines. But until he came across Hocking's data, he had no idea how much more efficient.
In the case of our bee, Buchmann used a tried-and-true formula, tested by Hocking, and his bee forefather, insect physiologist Karl Crailsheim:
Flight Efficiency of a Bee = 0.5 mg Per 1 Kilometer
Buchmann concluded that on one sip of honey, our bee could fly continuously for approximately 8 kilometers; on a full stomach of honey, a bee could go 64 kilometers. And when he scaled up bee fuel intake to a gallon, he came up with an astonishing number. Stand back ...
4,704,280 MILES PER GALLON!
That's a whole lot better than the Volkswagen.
"I was expecting something big, but not something quite so [Carl] Saganesque," Buchmann said.
In our interview on Morning Edition, I asked if we are just playing with numbers here. Does the bee get that mileage because it is so small? Is this just a scaling trick? Or is it because a bee is just a more efficient transportation vehicle?
"We are playing with the numbers a little bit in terms of the scaling factors," he said. "But that does not negate the fact that honeybees are super, super efficient, far more efficient than any kind of internal combustion engine that human engineers have ever devised. So yes, we're cheating a little bit, but if you want to think in terms of miles per gallon, no denying it: We [he means the bee] got almost 5 million miles per gallon. Pretty darn impressive."
Sorry, Volkswagen "L1."
We just thought the folks at Volkswagen should know.
Special thanks to Neil Wagner for his bee and VW cartoons. And to entomologist May Berenbaum at the University of Illinois for alerting me to this story. And should you wish to hear Buchmann do his calculations with help (it's almost a duet) with bluesman Muddy Waters singing "Sail on, my little honeybee," just hit the "listen" button at the top of this page.
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RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Volkswagen is introducing a new car a design that will get 170 miles per gallon. That's a level of fuel efficiency never seen before in any car. But as NPR's Robert Krulwich says - VW, prepare to be humbled.
ROBERT KRULWICH: No question - 170 miles per gallon, that's a huge engineering achievement. But as the blues singer Muddy Waters could tell those oh-so-proud German engineers...
(Soundbite of song, "Honey Bee")
Mr. MUDDY WATERS (Blues Singer): (Singing) Sail on, my little honey bee, sail on.
KRULWICH: You can get even better mileage from, of all things, a bee.
(Soundbite of song, "Honey Bee")
Mr. WATERS: (Singing) Sail on...
KRULWICH: We're talking here about an ordinary honey bee.
(Soundbite of song, "Honey Bee")
Mr. WATERS: (Singing) Sail on, my little honey bee, sail on.
KRULWICH: 'Cause when it comes to miles per gallon, bees turn out to be better than the latest Volkswagen or better than any car ever made. I learned that from Steve Buchmann. He studies bees at the University of Arizona.
Dr. STEVE BUCHMANN (University of Arizona): If you could introduce me as the international coordinator for the Pollinator Partnership.
KRULWICH: I can do that. But I want to make sure since you like bees so much that you don't hate cars. 'Cause that would be unfair.
Dr. BUCHMANN: No, no. I like cars.
KRULWICH: Okay. Good. So, it's your scientific contention then that a bee can take a unit of fuel and do more with it than a car.
Dr. BUCHMANN: Yeah, exactly. It's the ultimate hybrid mini-vehicle.
KRULWICH: Partly because muscles, all animal muscles, are superb converters of energy. And you know cars, even the best cars, how they get warm when the engine's on? Well, when you feel that warmth on the hood...
Dr. BUCHMANN: I mean, that is losing a huge, huge amount of heat. But in the case of the bee, it's just not losing nearly as much. So far more of the fuel is getting into the propulsion to beat those wings and drive the bee through the air.
KRULWICH: Oh, so they're pretty efficient.
Dr. BUCHMANN: Pretty, pretty, pretty efficient.
(Soundbite of song, "Honey Bee")
Mr. WATERS: (Singing) Sail on...
KRULWICH: Okay. So to calculate what we're going to call bee miles per gallon, what I gather you do is you take a bee and you give it all the honey it could possibly drink and then you attach it to some kind of a pole.
Dr. BUCHMANN: Yeah. You can actually tether a bee onto a piece of wood or a little wire and then...
KRULWICH: You don't think it's hurting the bee particularly?
Dr. BUCHMANN: No.
KRULWICH: And how do you get it fly?
Dr. BUCHMANN: Sometimes you need to blow on them a little bit, so give them a little experience of wind in their hair, you know?
(Soundbite of song, "Honey Bee")
Mr. WATERS: (Singing) Sail on, my little honey bee, sail on.
KRULWICH: So this tethered bee is going round and round and round a device which measures the distance as the bee flies. So you watch...
Dr. BUCHMANN: And let them fly till they run out of gas, till they can't fly any more.
KRULWICH: But now you know how far a bee can go on a tummy's worth of fuel. So, you can multiply and figure out how far it goes on a gallon. And it turns out bees are good.
Dr. BUCHMANN: Bees are amazing creatures.
KRULWICH: So, if you were to give a bee a whole gallon of honey, how many miles could that bee fly?
Dr. BUCHMANN: Four million, seven hundred and four thousand, two hundred and eighty miles per gallon.
(Soundbite of music)
KRULWICH: Did you just say 4,704,280 miles per gallon?
Dr. BUCHMANN: Yes, I did. Try that in the home automobile.
(Soundbite of song, "Honey Bee")
Mr. WATERS: (Singing) I said a lot of buzzing.
KRULWICH: Oh, come on. Aren't you just playing with the numbers here? Isn't it that the bee is very little or is it really that the bee is that good?
Dr. BUCHMANN: We are playing with the numbers a little bit in terms of scaling factors. But honey bees are far more efficient than any kind of internal combustion engine that, you know, humankind has ever devised. So if you want to think in terms of miles per gallon, no denying it - almost five million miles per gallon.
KRULWICH: Pretty darn impressive. And we just thought the folks at Volkswagen should know. Robert Krulwich, NPR News.
MONTAGNE: This is NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.
