Purpose of bee dance

Have you ever seen a waggle dance?

If you ever take a closer look at bees community you will see that bees have their own dance, we call it waggle dance. One honey bee eagerly buzzes turns around circles back and starts the run again, dancing in a figure-eight pattern. For humans, that waggle dance does not make much sense, but bees, like dolphins, have a very sophisticated form of communication.

Actually, bees have two types of dance: round dance and waggle dance. Bees fly in search of pollen and nectar. If they were successful in finding a food source, the scout’s bees return to the hive and have waggle dances on the honeycomb.
Scientists discovered that bees with that dance are communicating, very precisely, the location of nesting sites and great food sources of pollen.

The Austrian scientist who first discover how bees communicate, Karl von Frisch, for his work earned the Nobel Prize. Frisch discovered when the honey bee buzzes and shakes her abdomen, communicates the distance of the flowers.

A waggle dance consists of one to 100 or more circuits. Further the target, the longer the waggle phase. So, if bee buzzes for two seconds, the flowers may be around 100 meters away. Not only that, with dancing, they also can show others direction and quality of food source found.

If bees found a dead bee, they will perform far fewer waggle dances upon returning to the hive. The reason is that the bees associate the dead bee with the presence of a predator.

For precise direction, bees use a Sun-like compass and they even can remember a landmark!

How can bees do that?

Honey bees accumulate an electric charge during flying, and emit constant and modulated electric fields during their dance. Bees are very sensitive to low and high electric frequency. Some scientist discovered that bees can sense even the electric fields around flowers while foraging period.

Honey bees are very sensitive insects, especially to tastes, colors, also ultraviolet and smell.

When they doing their dances, they communicate with each other. They are showing out their sensibility and purpose while looking for the food sources and during the foraging.

Even the foraging period process will be adjusted until the food sources are found.

In first, they have a sense when and which food sources are available and start looking for a directions source. Bees are doing researchers of an area where they found a food source.

Forager bees are making individual visits to the chosen flowers even more than once, in order to choose a particular type of flower and to purchase the correct information to the rest of the hive.

They have a specific type of moving, their direction source is Sun. They are moving and locate their next step relative to the sun. They are using the sun as a fixed mark that helps them in the direction moving, they are keeping the angle between the line of flight and the line to the sun. Without deviation in moving, their fixed orientation will take them to a right place. While moving under the sun, bees communicate to each other.

Bees are very social beings, and they show us that with their ability to communicating and collaborate with each other.

If you find this story interesting or have more information about bees, please be free to post a comment!

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