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Of the diverse methods of communication known to humankind, the honey bee dance language is among the most intricate and well‐studied in all of the animal kingdom (Hölldobler and Wilson 2009). The waggle dance of the honey bee is perhaps best known and permits foraging worker bees to precisely communicate the location and value of a food source. Through several ingenious experiments, the Austrian scientist Karl von Frisch first described this remarkable dance language where cooperative honey bees of a colony share food gathering information (von Frisch 1967). Once a honey bee locates a rich food source, say a patch of flowers, she returns to her hive and performs the waggle dance. Here she will stage her recent journey to the flowers, like an actor in a play providing her audience with the knowledge they will need to also find her valuable discovery. Bees following the dance will learn several important facts about the flower patch: the distance to the flowers, the direction they need to fly to locate them, the odor of the flowers, and their perceived value as a nectar or pollen food source (Seeley 1995). The dance is characterized by a small figure eight movement pattern on the vertical surface of the comb in the darkness of the colony often near the hive entrance (Figure 4.2). The honey bee first performs a straight waggle run followed by alternating right and left loops returning to the starting point, another waggle run, and so on (Seeley 1995). During the waggle run, the dancing bee shakes her abdomen back and forth while also vibrating her wings; the duration of the waggle run and dance tempo speaks for the distance to the flowers, and the direction of the waggle run on the vertical comb of the hive relative to gravity symbolizes the direction to the flowers with respect to relative position of the sun, or solar azimuth angle (Winston 1987; Seeley 1995; Tsujiuchi et al. 2007). Further, an increasing intensity of dancing behavior and length of dance performance within the hive communicates a higher quality food resource (Winston 1987). Other signals involving pheromones, tactile contact, dance sounds, comb vibrations, and temperature are also thought to be conveyed during the waggle dance. Even though much has been revealed about how this remarkable dance communication is achieved, mysteries still remain (Thom et al. 2007; Tsujiuchi et al. 2007).

Figure 4.2 Physical communication in the honey bee using the Waggle Dance. The waggle dance occurs when a foraging bee returns to the hive and shares information on a food source; the bee performs a figure‐8 dance on the vertical comb near the hive entrance. The center of the dance pattern signifies the direction, distance, and quality of the food source with reference to the sun (Winston 1987; Seeley 2010). Direction: on the left side of the diagram the flower food source is located directly in the path of the sun, and the bee waggles straight upward toward the top of the hive indicating the food source is directly in line with the sun. On the right side of the diagram, the food source is at an angle of 150 ° to the left of the vertical axis of the hive, and this tells the surrounding observing bees that the food source is located in a direction 150 ° to the left of the solar azimuth. Distance: the distance to the food source is specified by the duration of the waggle dance – approximately one second of body waggle symbolizes 1000 m of flight (Seeley 2010). Quality: the quality of the food source is indicated by the intensity and longevity of the waggle dance (Winston 1987).

Source: © Lauren D. Sawchyn, DVM, CMI. Chapter: Physiology of the honey bee, authored by Rolfe M Radcliffe and illustrated by Lauren D. Sawchyn.