Waggle Dance | How Bees Communicate

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What is the waggle dance? How do bees communicate? These fascinating creatures have their own language, and dance to communicate…Here’s How:

Waggle Dance | How Bees Communicate

I’ve always been fascinated with honeybees. The way they collect and make honey, how they build their hives and also, how they communicate. Did you know that honeybees communicate with each other through the waggle dance? If you didn’t well it’s something that you may want to observe next time you see some honeybees. Get more information about what the waggle dance is and what it means with this cool infographic.

Fun Fact: It would take a single honey bee approximately 1 million trips, from hive to flower, to produce a standard jar of honey.

image via VetSci

The ‘waggle dance’ is form of communication between bees. It consists of a figure-eight motion.

The waggle dance tells two important things:

1. The distance to a food source
2. The direction in relation to the sun

The angle of the dance communicates which way the honey bees should travel in relation to the sun.

Following the direciton obtained by the angle of the dance, the bee will eventualy come across the food source. Distance to the source is indicated by the length of the straight run to the dance.

Controversies of the Dance Language:

In one experiment 93% of the bees chose to ignore the waggle dance and return to foraging areas of which they had previous knowledge.

It is thought bees may be able to use olfactory information from the dancing bee to detect flowers with a similar scent.

It is also believed that watching a dance may just inspire a bee to go foraging or simply job a bee’s memory about the location of a previously discovered pollen resource.

So what do you think about the honeybee language? Let us know below in the comments!

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Want more bee-nteresting facts? Get more here:

The Ancient History Between Humans and Honeybees

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