Surprisingly, the total solar eclipse in August of 2017 was the first time bee activity has ever been studied during a solar eclipse. Scientists, together with “citizen-scientists” (such as teachers, students, and enthusiasts) set up 16 acoustic monitoring stations with microphones in three states along the path of solar totality.
Can you guess what happened? Bees continued to fly even during the partial eclipse phase, but all bee activity stopped during total eclipse. It was the same at every monitoring station. The next total eclipse in the U.S. will come in 2024. There is so much still to discover!