Honey bees engage in complex movements, known as dances, to share information within their colony. These dances are a primary method of communication, allowing individual bees to convey details about resources such as food, water, or potential new nest sites. These movements enable other bees to understand and act upon shared intelligence, demonstrating a sophisticated form of non-verbal communication. This intricate system ensures the efficient functioning and survival of the entire bee community.
The Waggle Dance
The waggle dance is a highly structured form of communication performed by forager bees to indicate the precise location of distant resources. This dance involves a distinctive figure-eight pattern. The bee moves in a straight line, known as the “waggle run,” while vigorously shaking its abdomen from side to side, then circles back to the starting point, alternating between right and left turns.
The direction of the waggle run directly conveys the direction of the resource relative to the sun’s position outside the hive. For instance, a waggle run straight upward on the vertical comb signals that the resource is directly towards the sun, while an angle indicates a corresponding deviation. The duration of the waggle run communicates the distance to the resource; a longer waggle run signifies a greater distance. The intensity of the dance, including buzzing sounds, can also indicate the quality and quantity of the food source.
Other Dance Forms
While the waggle dance communicates precise location, other simpler dances convey different types of information. The round dance is performed when a food source is very close to the hive, within 10 to 100 meters. In this dance, the bee runs in small circles, frequently reversing direction. The round dance signals the presence of nearby food without specific directional cues.
The round dance can also convey the quality of the food source through its intensity. As the distance to a food source increases beyond 50 meters, the round dance gradually transitions into a more elongated, crescent-shaped pattern known as the sickle dance, before becoming a full waggle dance at distances over 150 meters. This sickle dance serves as an intermediate communication, indicating resources at distances between 50 and 150 meters from the hive.
Decoding the Dance and Its Significance
Other bees within the hive interpret the information conveyed by these dances through a combination of sensory cues. They closely follow the dancing bee, touching her with their antennae to detect vibrations and movements. These followers also use olfactory cues, as the dancing bee carries the scent of the food source on her body. The bees integrate the directional information, derived from the angle of the waggle run, with their internal sense of the sun’s position.
The duration of the waggle run is translated by the follower bees into an approximate flight distance. This communication system allows the colony to efficiently allocate foragers to food sources, water, or new nesting sites. Austrian ethologist Karl von Frisch deciphered the meaning of these bee dances. His observations and experiments revealed that bees use these dances to convey information about direction and distance, a discovery that earned him a Nobel Prize in 1973.