Here’s how bees communicate the location of good flowers to others
Bees communicate the location of good flowers to others primarily through a specialized movement called the waggle dance.
When a bee discovers a rich source of nectar or pollen, it returns to the hive and performs this dance on the honeycomb, providing information about both the distance and direction to the flower patch relative to the sun[1][2][3][4][5].
Key aspects of bee communication:
• Waggle dance: The bee runs in a straight line, waggling its abdomen, then circles back to repeat the pattern. The angle of the waggle run (relative to vertical in the hive) corresponds to the angle between the sun and the flower source, and the duration of the waggle represents the distance[5].
• Round dance: If the food source is very close (typically under 100 meters), the bee performs a simpler round or circle dance, signaling nearby resources but not giving precise directions[1][2].
• Odor cues: The dancing bee often has the scent of the flowers on her body and shares a sample of the collected nectar with attentive bees, helping them recognize the correct floral scent when they leave the hive[2][5].
• Priority of information: For unfamiliar food sources, bees rely primarily on the dance to find new locations. For familiar sites, scent and taste cues from food exchanges in the hive become more important than the dance[3][4].
Through this complex yet precise system, bees efficiently recruit others to the best foraging sites, supporting both their colony and the pollination of plants. This dance-based communication is unique to honey bees; other bee species may use simpler forms of communication or rely mainly on scent cues[6].
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1. https://www.kew.org/read-and-watch/bees-can-dance
2. https://askabiologist.asu.edu/games-sims/bee-dance-game/introduction.html
3. https://phys.org/news/2020-02-bees-prioritize-unique-waggle.html
4. https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/about-us/news/bees-prioritise-their-unique-waggle-dance-to-find-flowers/
5. https://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/insects/ahb/inf7
6. https://www.buzzaboutbees.net/how-do-bees-locate-flowers.html
