After buzzing around flowerbeds for honey, bees can return unerringly to their hives. This is because bees use sunlight as a compass. Bees sense the sun's polarization to confirm the sun's position and, therefore, the direction in which to fly. The sun's polarization is based on the direction from which one looks at the sun and the sun's height in the sky.

The eyes of bees are actually arrays of multiple single eyes. Each eye has eight light receptors, and each receptor is coated with a polarizing filter that allows light with different directions of polarization to pass through. A bee thus senses polarization as it reflects in a certain direction.

We believe that not only bees, but also many other insects use this method to determine the sun's direction.