The Secret Language of Bees: Decoding the Waggle Dance

Have you ever wondered how a tiny bee finds a flower patch miles away and then tells its hive mates exactly where to go? It’s not magic, but a sophisticated system of communication. This article will explore the fascinating world of bee interaction, focusing on the incredible “waggle dance” they use to share the location of nectar.

The Waggle Dance: A Bee's GPS

The most famous and complex form of bee communication is the waggle dance. Discovered by Nobel laureate Karl von Frisch, this dance is a detailed set of instructions performed by a successful forager bee to recruit others to a profitable food source. It’s a marvel of nature that conveys three critical pieces of information: direction, distance, and quality.

Imagine a forager bee returning to the dark, vertical honeycomb inside the hive. She crawls onto the comb and begins to perform a figure-eight pattern. The other bees gather around her, touching her with their antennae to interpret the message.

Communicating Direction: Using the Sun as a Compass

The most brilliant part of the dance is how it communicates direction relative to the sun’s position. The bee cannot see the sun from inside the hive, so she uses gravity as a reference.

The “Up” Direction: On the vertical comb, the direction straight up represents the direction of the sun outside the hive.
The Angle of the Dance: The bee performs a “waggle run” in the middle of her figure-eight pattern. The angle of this run relative to the vertical “up” direction tells the other bees which direction to fly.
An Example: If the nectar source is located 40 degrees to the right of the sun, the bee will perform her waggle run at a 40-degree angle to the right of the vertical line on the comb. The other bees understand this and will fly at that angle relative to the sun’s current position when they leave the hive. Amazingly, bees can even account for the sun’s movement across the sky over time.

Communicating Distance: It’s All in the Timing

How far away is the food? The waggle dance answers this question with remarkable precision. The distance to the source is communicated by the duration of the waggle run.

Longer Dance, Longer Journey: The longer the bee waggles her abdomen during the straight run, the farther away the nectar is.
A General Rule: While it varies slightly between honeybee species, a common measurement is that one second of waggling corresponds to a distance of approximately one kilometer (about 0.6 miles). A very short waggle indicates a source that is just a few hundred meters away.

Communicating Quality: The Excitement Factor

A forager bee won’t bother recruiting her sisters to a mediocre flower patch. The dance also conveys the quality, or sugar concentration, of the nectar source.

Vigor and Repetition: The more enthusiastic and vigorous the dance, and the more times the bee repeats it, the richer the food source. A bee returning from a patch of high-quality nectar will dance with more energy and for a longer period, exciting more bees to join the effort.
Sharing a Taste: During the dance, the forager will often stop and regurgitate a small sample of the nectar she collected. This allows the other bees to taste and smell the specific type of flower, making it easier for them to locate it once they are in the correct area.

More Than Just a Dance: Other Forms of Bee Communication

While the waggle dance is the most complex, bees have an entire vocabulary of signals to keep their colony running smoothly. This is the “unseen world” of interaction that makes a hive a superorganism.

The Round Dance

For food sources that are very close to the hive, typically less than 100 meters, the waggle dance is too complex. Instead, a forager performs the “round dance.” She simply runs in small circles, alternating direction. This dance doesn’t provide directional information but tells the other bees, “There is good food very close by!” The scent of the flowers on her body is enough to guide them.

Chemical Signals: A World of Pheromones

Much of the communication within a hive is chemical. Bees produce and detect a wide variety of pheromones, which are special chemicals that trigger specific behaviors.

Queen Mandibular Pheromone (QMP): The queen bee constantly produces this powerful pheromone. It spreads throughout the hive as worker bees touch her and then each other. QMP lets the colony know their queen is healthy and present, and it also prevents other female bees from developing their ovaries.
Alarm Pheromones: When a bee stings a threat, it releases an alarm pheromone that smells like bananas. This scent alerts other guard bees, marking the target and inciting a defensive response from the colony.
Nasonov Pheromone: This is an orientation pheromone. Bees release it at the entrance of the hive or at a food source to help guide their sisters home or to the correct location.

Vibrational and Touch Communication

Bees also communicate through touch and vibrations. For example, a bee might perform a “shaking signal,” where she vibrates her body to activate or get the attention of another bee. During the waggle dance itself, the follower bees are in direct physical contact with the dancer, feeling her movements and vibrations to interpret the message in the darkness of the hive.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do bees navigate on cloudy days? Bees have a remarkable ability to see polarized light. Even when the sun is hidden behind clouds, they can detect the patterns of polarized light in the sky and use it to determine the sun’s position with great accuracy.

Do all bee species perform the waggle dance? No, the waggle dance is most famously associated with honeybees (genus Apis). Other types of bees, like bumblebees, have different, often simpler, methods for recruiting nestmates to food sources, such as leaving scent trails.

What other information do bees communicate? Besides nectar, bees use the waggle dance to communicate the location of pollen, water sources, and even potential new locations for a nest when the colony is preparing to swarm.