On 06 Jul 1999 at 12:02:37 Chris Jones wrote:

>>>>>> "seebs" == seebs  <seebs@plethora.net> writes:
>
>seebs> In message <19990706144534.E29001@fundy.ca>, David Maxwell
>seebs> writes:
>>> On Tue, Jul 06, 1999 at 08:58:35AM -0700, John Nemeth wrote:
>>>> At one point, the theory of aeronautics said that bees can't
>>>> fly...
>
>>> As for the Bees, I've often wondered what the, err 'Bug' in the
>>> theory was? Don't suppose you know the flaw?
>
>seebs> I'm told that bee wings are flexible, and can curve a little,
>seebs> and we didn't realize this.  Could be wrong.
>
>To continue the off-topic thread:
>
>I heard it was (at least in part) because the theories that were
>invoked were only looking for the Venturi effect and related things.
>And what makes bees fly is these huge (relatively speaking) cyclones
>of turbulence that they create at the edges of their wings.  The
>little cyclones have very low air pressure.

Discovery or Nova or one of those kinds of productions had a pretty 
interesting episode on this.  Apparently, the actual motion of the
bee's (and other insects) wings wasn't clearly understood.  The 
analogy to birds was made and was incorrect.  The bugs introduce a 
circular (or was that figure 8) motion into the expected up and down
strokes.  This creates the turbulence and fits into the theories of
areodynamics quite nicely.

I don't think the motion scales well for larger bodies.  Some recon
craft are using this effect, at least in research labs.  The size of 
these craft is shrinking rapidly and the size of the camera & transmitter
is now the constaining factor.

Paul