Honey bee communication: a new model
In his new book Communication Between Honeybees, Professor Jürgen Tautz studies the dance language of honey bees, plotting the historical development of our understanding of this and other methods of communication and considering recently discovered refinements. While most beekeepers are familiar with the model developed by Nobel prize-winning Karl von Frisch from the 1920s onward, Tautz proposes that honey bee communication methods are even more sophisticated than is usually supposed. Here, he demonstrates the traditional model and compares it with his updated model. Next month Professor Tautz will write about how he researched and developed revised theories of honey bee communication for his new book.
The classical waggle dance model
The waggle dance of honey bees provides precise (‘true’) information about the direction and distance of a food site from the hive. In the first diagram, the dances to Site 1 and Site 3 indicate vertical movements up or down. Bees in the field orientate to the sun’s position and so the dance followers understand that the food Sites 1 and 3 are in a straight line in relation to the sun. Similarly, following the dance for Site 2, followers fly at an angle of 80 degrees left in relation to the sun’s position to arrive at the goal. The length of the waggle dance indicates the distance to the flowers.
The new three-phase model
The waggle dance of honey bees provides imprecise (‘half-true’) information about the direction and distance of the food site from the nest, indicating only an approximate area in relation to the nest within which the food site can be found. A dance follower (recruit) flying to a food site unknown to it, for which a foraging bee has advertised in its dance, proceeds through three separate phases.
Further reading
The Dance Language of Honeybees (Belknap Press, 1993)
Karl von Frisch wrote several books about his discoveries, some of which are now collectable – with a price to match. This reprint is nearly 600 pages and has an introduction by Tom Seeley. For a lighter (and less expensive) read try Bees: Their Vision, Chemical Senses, and Language, also by von Frisch, available second-hand in various editions.
The Dancing Bees by Tania Munz (University of Chicago Press, 2016)
This first in-depth biography of von Frisch paints a complex and nuanced portrait of a scientist at work under Nazi rule.
How Karl von Frisch deciphered the waggle dance by Thomas D Seeley
(BeeCraft), October 2021. An excellent concise description of von Frisch made his discovery, written by one the world’s leading bee researchers.
Professor Jürgen Tautz
Professor Jürgen Tautz is a behavioural scientist, sociobiologist and honey bee specialist. He is professor at the Biocenter of the Biozentrum der Julius-Maximilians-Univerität in Würzburg, Germany and is author of several books about bees, being best-known for The Buzz About Bees: Biology of a Superorganism (Springer, 2008) and Honey Bee (see March 2022).
