Communication Methods and Dance Language#
1 . How many bee trips per year does it take to keep the colony supplied in pollen and nectar?
This is an enormous job- 5 million bee trips per year, therefore, bees must forage very efficiently.
2 . Who discovered honey bee communication?
Karl von Frisch. He won the Nobel Prize in 1973 for his work.
3 . How do bees communicate within their social structure?
Sight Touch Movement (dance) Chemical signals (pheromones) Sound vibrations
4 . What is the honey bee dance and what is the purpose?
When a foraging bee discovers a new food source, she fills her honey stomach and pollen baskets with the new source, and flies back to the colony. There, she uses the nectar and pollen for sampling to other bees and performs a repeating pattern of movements called dancing to recruit other foragers to join her on the newly discovered source.
5 . What are the two basic dances honey bees use to communicate food sources to other members of their community?
Round dance Wagtail (Waggle) dance.
6 . What is the round dance and how do bees use it?
If food is found less than 50 - 100 yards away, she performs a round dance on the vertical beeswax combs in the hive. This dance does not communicate precise distance or direction, just that a resource was found close to the nest. Quick short steps and runs around in narrow circles on the comb sometimes changing direction and repeating the dance. She may dance for several seconds or for as long as a minute. She may stop and distribute contents of her honey stomach for a “taste” and then begin on another location on the comb. The liveliness of the dance is influenced by the source richness. The more vigorous the dance, and the faster, is relative to the higher sugar content of the nectar source.
7 . What is the Wagtail (Waggle) Dance and how is it used?
Communicates distance, direction, and quality of the resource further from the hive. Bees watching the dance may release a “begging signal” (squeaking) and receive a sample of the resource from the dancing bee. The bee runs a narrow half circle to one side then performs a sharp turn and runs in a straight line while vigorously waggling her abdomen. Then she makes a half circle in the opposite direction completing the full circle. The straight portion is always performed with the bee orienting her body at the same position relative to gravity on the vertical comb in the dark hive. Orientation to gravity encodes direction to fly and time of waggling sound production imparts distance to the source. Bees do not communicate distance, but the amount of energy needed to arrive at the resource. When they get close to the resource, odor and visual clues take over to guide them the rest of the way.
8 . Do honey bees emit a sound when they do the waggle dance?
The dancing bee produces a series of sounds with wing muscles and abdominal waggling at a frequency of 250 Hz. There is a direct correlation between sound production and distance the bee must travel to a food source. The farther the food source, the longer the waggling portion of the dance Bees use their Johnson’s organ in the pedicel of the antenna to pick up the sound vibrations. Flight conditions are automatically calculated and included in the information. For example, a strong headwind distance will be slightly longer/further.