The Dance of the Honey Bee: How Bees Communicate Food Sources
Honey bees have an incredible way of sharing information about food sources through dancing! These dances, performed inside the hive, allow bees to communicate the location and quality of nectar and pollen. There are two main types of bee dances: the waggle dance and the round dance.
The Waggle Dance: Communicating Distance and Direction
The waggle dance is used when a flower patch is at least 150 yards away from the hive. In this dance, the bee performs a figure-eight movement with her body. She runs in a narrow half-circle to one side, then makes a sharp turn and runs in a straight line while waggling her abdomen from side to side. After completing the straight run, she repeats the half-circle motion on the other side, forming the figure-eight.
The most important part of this dance is the straight run, known as the waggle run. The duration of the waggle run indicates the distance to the food source—the longer the waggle, the farther away the flowers are. Additionally, the angle at which the bee performs the dance on the comb tells the other bees the direction of the flowers in relation to the sun. This clever system helps forager bees locate the exact spot where nectar-rich flowers are blooming.
The Round Dance: Conveying Proximity
The round dance is used when the food source is much closer to the hive, between 50-100 yards away. As the name suggests, the bee dances in small, narrow circles on the comb. While this dance doesn’t communicate direction like the waggle dance, it does convey that the food is nearby.
The liveliness of the round dance also gives clues about the quality of the food source. The sweeter the nectar, the more vigorous the bee’s dance. Sometimes, the dancing bee will even regurgitate a bit of nectar from her honey stomach and offer it to the other bees. This provides additional information about the food source, such as its taste and quality.
The Power of Collective Bee Communication
The goal of the dancing bee is to recruit as many foragers as possible to the food source. What’s truly fascinating is that multiple bees often perform dances at the same time, each directing the colony to different food patches. This allows the hive to exploit multiple food sources simultaneously, ensuring they’re not overly reliant on just one patch. It’s a brilliant strategy of divide and conquer, where the collective efforts of the colony maximize their food intake.
The dance of the honey bee is a remarkable example of teamwork and communication in nature. Next time you see bees foraging, you can appreciate the intricate dance that led them to their food!