Take a look at this freaky, head-banging bee

“When you translate that to acceleration, it’s nearly insane levels, among the highest we’ve noted in the animal kingdom”, said Dr Hogendoorn’s colleague, Dr Sridhar Ravi from RMIT University. Slow motion and acoustic monitoring revealed each species employed two totally different mechanisms of buzzing the flowers. It uses its head to shake loose the pollen, a contrast to the conventional methods of brushing up against flowers so the pollen stick to the hairs of a bee.

“We were absolutely surprised”. In contrast, the Australian bee prefers a more “hands free” approach.

An Australian blue-banded bee’s (Amegilla murrayensis) head banging was recorded on video by researchers from the University of Adelaide in a joint project with RMIT, Harvard University and University of California, Davis.

Scientists have never seen anything like this and were astonished to watch the Australian blue-banded bee’s extreme pollination method, Discovery News reported. The insect, known as Australian blue-banded bee, is doing so to release pollen into the air, as per the researchers.

While employers tend to frown upon such antics in the human workplace, the head-banging bees’ method has so impressed scientists that they’re hopeful the discovery will help them both in figuring out more efficient crop pollination techniques and even understanding muscular stress, something that will help develop tiny flying robots.

The researchers, for the first time, have filmed the bees banging their head while getting pollen out of a flower.

“Together, this suggests that Australian blue-banded bees may be more efficient tomato pollinators than bumblebees”, she said.

The research paper will be published in the journal, Arthropod-Plant Interactions.

Scientists were able to prove this by recording and studying the audio frequency and duration of its buzz during its head bang, which showed that the bee can spend less time at each flower. Dr Katja Hogendoorn, a bee expert from the University of Adelaide, said such types of bees need fewer bees per hectare, which is a good thing.

The rapid tapping movement, which was videoed occurring at a brain-numbing 350 times per second, causes vibrations that shake pollen out of a flower’s anther – where pollen is produced.