Honeybees

Although honeybees obviously lead complicated lives little was known about how complicated their methods of communication were. Approximately seventy years ago experimental observations made it clear that bees were communicating in an abstract manner that was a surprise to everyone. Since then the "dances" that honeybees use to communicate have become a good example of how complicated animals' relation to their environment and to each other can really be.

In early observations of the behavior of honeybees watchers placed a dish of honey out in the open. First one bee would come and carry some food away. This bee would be followed by several more and then dozens of bees would come to carry away the food. This happened repeatedly even when the hive was at a great distance form the source of food (Winston 150). It almost seemed as if the bees were telling each other where the honey was located. Most people just assumed that the later bees were following the leader who had been out foraging for food sources. But one curious researcher set up an experiment. He would observe the bee who first found the food and capture her when she left the hive to return to the food source. Even without the leader the other bees would arrive at the correct spot in the same amount of time as they did when they were supposedly following their leader. This made it clear that the bees were communicating the location of the honey in some way that was not understood (Winston 151).

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find food and so "a message telling only that a food source was nearer or farther could scarcely have much biological value" (von Frisch 92). This brought him to observe that the tail-wagging motions must be connected to the problem of precisely locating the food source. In the tail-wagging dance the forager bee begins with a straight run and then turns to the left or the right. She then completes a half-circle, goes through another run and completes a half circle in the other direction, starting all over again (Winston 154-55). The shape of the dance is like a figure-eight. During the dance the abdomen is moved in a rapid sideways motion. Von Frisch was able to determine that the number of turns and the rate of wagging the abdomen indicated the precise distances of the food sources from the hive. Sounds made by "muscular and skeletal vibrations" are only added to the wagging dance when there is a high-quality supply of food (Winston 155). As the particular source of food begins to run out, the bees leave out the noises and this attracts fewer bees to the food source (Larson and Larson 101). Researchers can interpret the movements of the wagging dances so precisely that they can arrive at the source before the bees do (

Category: Science - H