Honey bee dances are amongst the most fascinating aspects of their complex behaviour. Honey bees live in large colonies of up to 60,00 in summer and communication is essential to make the colony efficient and to ensure survival.
In the first half of the twentieth century German-Austrian scientist Karl von Frisch cracked the code for honey bees ‘waggle dance.’ He discovered that a dancing honey bee is communicating vital distance and direction information to other bees, so that instead of looking randomly for food they know exactly where to go. Karl von Frisch was later awarded a Nobel prize for his work.
Photo credit: Heather Broccard Bell
Now a new study by researchers from the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG), published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveals that the honey bee waggle dance is not a one-way communication but, in fact, a dynamic, two-way interaction shaped by its audience. These findings challenge the trad…