How can bees fly? It is against the laws of flight.?

Question

How can bees fly? It is against the laws of flight.?

Answer 1

That story came up when a biologist in the 1930s asked an aeronautical engineer to apply a lift calculation to a bumble bee, which it failed miserably.  

The problem with the calculations is that they are for *fixed* wing aircraft, like planes.  Bees are not fixed wing aircraft, they fly more like a helicopter.  If you apply the same formula to an Apache helicopter, it would fail miserably too.  Obviously, both Apache helicopters and Bumble bees are capable of flight.

See.. the calculation was used to determine if there was enough surface area on the wings to provide lift for the airplane.  Helicopters work differently though, they rotate their "wings" at a high speed so that more air is drawn over them.  This creates lift while the vehicle does not have to move forward, where a fixed wing airplane has to constantly move forward or it will stall and fall to the ground.  Bees do the same thing.  They move their small wings at high speeds to generate lift.

I hope that makes everything clear.

Answer 2

Why would it be against the laws of flight?

Answer 3

This used to be said of bumblebees by people who misunderstood the laws of aerodynamics.  It's not actually true.