Fig. 1. (A) A typical flight pattern of a honeybee trained to an artificial feeder, which was then removed, resulting in a localized search around the former position of the feeder. The location of the honeybee was recorded every 3 s unless the radar failed to detect the radar transponder. The hive was located at (x, y)=(210 m, 0 m) and the feeder was located at (x, y)=(0 m, 0 m) (approximately). The flight begins and ends in the vicinity of the hive (marked with an `H'). The locations where there are significant changes in flight orientation are indicated (•). A significant change in orientation is taken to arise when the angle between the current flight segment (joining two successive recorded positions) and the flight segment immediately following the last change in orientation is less than 90°, i.e. when the current non-local flight orientation differs from proceeding flight orientation by more than 90° (Reynolds et al., 2006). (B) Representation of the honeybee flight in terms of straight-line flights and changes in flight orientation. The statistical properties of these representations do not differ significantly from representations in which local abrupt changes in orientation are taken to arise when the angle between two successive flight segments (i.e. between three successive recorded positions) is less than 90°. The close correspondence between these two [local (C) and non-local (D)] representations indicates that most changes in flight orientation occur abruptly rather than through the accumulation of small changes.