Dance Language
Lexikon
When a forager bee returns from a rewarding flight, she dances on the comb and thereby recruits other bees for the same source.
When a forager bee returns from a rewarding flight, she dances on the comb and thereby recruits other bees for the same source. What is communicated is not only finds of nectar and pollen, but also water sources, resin sources, and, when swarming, the location of possible new nesting sites. The dance thus serves recruitment: the neighboring bees are meant to find the spot more quickly.
Two basic forms are distinguished. The round dance indicates that the source is close to the hive; a rule of thumb puts the distance below about 80 meters. For more distant targets, the waggle dance is performed, a figure of eight lying on its side with a straight waggle run in the middle. The transition between the two forms is fluid. In the waggle dance, the distance is encoded in the duration of the waggle phase: the longer the waggling, the farther away the target. The direction is indicated by the angle: if the bee runs the waggle run at a certain angle to the vertical on the comb, the target lies at the same angle to the current position of the sun. In addition, there is the floral scent that the dancer gives off.
It is often said that the dance indicates the exact location very precisely. That is an overstatement. The foragers get only a rough estimate of direction and distance. The distance information is relatively precise only within a range of about one kilometer around the hive; beyond that, the difference in waggle duration is barely perceptible anymore. Bees also do not pass on figures in meters, but their own sense of the distance covered.
A common error concerns the year. Karl von Frisch discovered and described these dances as early as around 1923, but he received the Nobel Prize only in 1973, specifically the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, together with Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen.