ABSTRACT
Most flying insects face the problem of moving over large distances relative to their body size and, like most animals, have evolved a diversity of mechanisms to move and position themselves adaptively. The particular orientational problems that an insect must solve depend largely upon how and where it makes its living. Some of the most complicated orientational tasks confront insects that forage from a home base — virtually all social bees and wasps as well as any solitary insect which provisions its young in a nest. Such insects find their way back to a single point in the landscape after a foraging flight that might have taken them hundreds or even thousands of meters away. Honeybees are extreme generalists with respect to the particular floral species they exploit, but, at least on the level of the colony, are specialists with respect to quality.
