When I first got into beekeeping I read all of the standard newbie literature on the subject. And unlike my high school Algebra, I absorbed it like a sponge. But by far the most interesting book concerning the nature of bees was written by an almost blind man with the help of his wife, Karl von Frisch.  It was called, “The Dance Language and Orientation of Honeybees”.

Karl von Frish was an Austrian ethologist and zoologist who won the Nobel Prize in 1973 for his work with animal behavior. One aspect of his research delved into the ability of honey bees to transmit information concerning the quality and direction of a nectar resource through the “waggle dance”.

Karl von Frisch - "Now we dance"

As foraging bees search the area around their hive for nectar they will come across resources with varying degrees of worth. Nectar is mostly water and to turn it into honey by the bees, they must evaporate most of the nectar’s water content level to about 18%.  To do so requires the honey bees to use their high speed wing action and create a flow of air through the hive that pulls the moisture out of the nectar.  The higher the water content, the more time and energy is spent by the bees to reduce its levels.  Knowing this, it is in the honeybees best interest to locate nectar resources that already have a lower level of water compared to similar nectar resources.

Karl von Frisch realized upon a behavior of honeybees that points out to other foraging honeybees the compass direction of a resource in relation to the sun  and its distance from the hive.   This behavior is known as the “Wag -Tail  Dance”.  When a honeybee performs the “dance” she is making any one of several types of movement patterns that each translate to a key piece of information about a resource.  Below is an image of several types of dances.

Bee Communication Dances

The type of dance they perform partly translates to the distance the hive is from the nectar source.  If the nectar source is about 0 – 10 yards from the hive a bee will perform the Round Dance.  When 10 – 100 yards from the hive the dance will transition from the Round Dance into a Crescent Dance.  Beyond 100 yards the dance will transition again into the Wag-Tail Dance. Karl von Frisch observed that  the number of “straight runs” the bee makes as she performs the Wag-Tail dance  is an indicator of how far away the nectar source is.  A straight run is the middle course the honeybee takes as she performs the looping pattern.

Cant touch this!

Graphically we as humans can see the pattern of this dance from  looking down on to a 2-D surface.  However, to the honeybees this visual reference is useless.  They rely on a phenomena caused by the dance itself. Following Karl’s  discovery it was later learned that honeybees also pick up  information related to distance  from sound signals that occur during the dance.   Honeybees can perceive “airborne sounds by detecting air-particle movements, rather than  pressure oscillations as in human hearing.” The Hive and the Honey Bee (page 284)  As the bee dances, her wings emit low frequency pulses in the 250-300 Hertz range with a pulse duration of about “20 milliseconds and a repetition frequency of approximately 30 per second.”

The honeybees surrounding the dancing bee pick up on these pulses using their antenna which are placed near the abdomen of the dancing bee. The number of pulses detected translates into the distance of a nectar source from the hive. The greater the number of pulses, the greater the distance the nectar source is from the hive.

So now we can see how bees communicate distance but how do they communicate directional information. Honeybees use a compass not based on the magnetic poles but  upon the location of the sun over the horizon during a given time.

During a bee’s flight in search of nectar she may happen to come across a large cluster of plants within the midst of their nectar flow.  For the purpose of our first example we will assume it is directly in front of the hive, at least 100 yards out, and the sun also happens to be in straight alignment with the food source and the hive.  In this scenario the honey bee would come back to the hive and do her wag-tail dance with the “straight run” going right up the vertical face of the comb as seen in the picture below. (Image 1)

Hive, nectar source, and sun are in alignment.

Hive and nectar source are in alignment. Sun is 45 degrees to the right of the hive.

If the sun was 45 degrees to the right of the hive and the nectar source was in the same place as in the previous example, the “straight run” of the honeybees dance would change accordingly.

So, the angle of the run is 45 degrees left of the compass direction of the sun.  45 degrees left of the sun puts the food source in straight alignment with the hive. (Image 2)

Now if the food source was to the right of the hive by 45 degrees and the sun was straight in front of the hive as in the first example the angle of the “straight run” would also point 45 degrees to the right. (Image 3)

Honeybees are also able to communicate to one another about the quality of the nectar source.  When a honeybee forager returns to the hive other forager bees in the hive will vibrate the honeycomb using a 380 HZ frequency.  These “begging signals”  will stimulate the forager to regurgitate a droplet of its new found nectar source for the others to “analyze”.  This is very useful in that it will alert other forager bees whether another source of nectar has been found and if it is better than the resource they are currently culling from.

All of this information compounds upon the initial discoveries from Karl von Frisch’s research during the 1950’s. Although the idea of the honeybees having their own means of communication  was  put forward earlier by Ernst Spitzner in 1788, it was not until Karl von Frisch published “Uber die Sprache der Bienen” was attention truly devoted to this aspect of the honeybee’s behavior.

It is very interesting to read these older works and learn what was considered “current” for the time.  Science is always evolving and building upon itself and to appreciate it  one should try reading these little gems.  The information may be out of date or completely wrong but being a beekeeper I am fascinated by all that we have learned since the time of their writings. My next endeavor is to complete Lorenzo L. Langsroth classic, “Hive and the Honey-bee”.

Hive and sun are in alignment. Nectar source is 45 degrees to the right.