Bees in Space: Our Guide to NASA's Orbital Pollinator Experiments

Back in 1982, we sent 14 bees on a space mission. Astronauts observed the bees and noticed that they had trouble flying and “finding their way” likely due to the lack of gravity and directional indicators like north. But we learned something, even though that group of bees died when they returned to earth. 

Two years later, a college student designed another experiment with a group of 3,300 honeybees that went up on a shuttle mission. They, too, struggled for a bit, but they managed to orient themselves and got to the task of building a honeycomb - successfully. The overall takeaway was that they had a similar sort of like cycle to what bees on earth had. The queen even laid eggs, though they didn’t hatch. But the bees did make it back to earth and were returned to the farm from which they came. 

Sadly, not much more was done with this information - but we know that bees can survive away from other and could be effective pollinators and can produce honey. 

Those are things that are useful to us in the future 

https://www.vegasbees.com/post/history-of-bees-in-space

https://texasarchive.org/2024AC06462