Waggle dance

This article is about bee behavior. For the beer, see Wells & Young's Brewery. For the football play, see bootleg play. For the video game term, see Waggle (video gaming).
The waggle dance - the direction the bee moves in relation to the hive indicates direction; if it moves vertically the direction to the source is directly towards the Sun. The duration of the waggle part of the dance signifies the distance.

Waggle dance is a term used in beekeeping and ethology for a particular figure-eight dance of the honey bee. By performing this dance, successful foragers can share information about the direction and distance to patches of flowers yielding nectar and pollen, to water sources, or to new nest-site locations with other members of the colony.[1][2]

The waggle dance and the round dance are two forms of dance behaviour that are part of a continuous transition. As the distance between the resource and the hive increases, the round dance transforms into variations of a transitional dance, which, when communicating resources at even greater distances, becomes the waggle dance.[3] In the case of Apis mellifera ligustica, the round dance is performed until the resource is about 10 metres away from the hive, transitional dances are performed when the resource is at a distance of 20 to 30 metres away from the hive, and finally, when it is located at distances greater than 40 metres from the hive, the waggle dance is performed.[3] However, even close to the nest, the round dance can contain elements of the waggle dance, such as a waggle portion.[4] It has therefore been suggested that the term waggle dance is better for describing both the waggle dance and the round dance.[5]

Austrian ethologist and Nobel laureate Karl von Frisch was one of the first who translated the meaning of the waggle dance.[6]

  1. ^ Riley JR, Greggers U, Smith AD, Reynolds DR, Menzel R (May 2005). "The flight paths of honeybees recruited by the waggle dance". Nature. 435 (7039): 205–7. Bibcode:2005Natur.435..205R. doi:10.1038/nature03526. PMID 15889092. S2CID 4413962.
  2. ^ Seeley TD, Visscher PK, Passino KM (2006). "Group decision making in honey bee swarms". American Scientist. 94 (3): 220–229. doi:10.1511/2006.3.220.
  3. ^ a b Rinderer TE, Beaman LD (October 1995). "Genic control of honey bee dance language dialect". Theoretical and Applied Genetics. 91 (5): 727–32. doi:10.1007/bf00220950. PMID 24169907. S2CID 31542946.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference GF2009 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Gardner KE, Seeley TD, Calderone NW (2008-04-01). "Do honeybees have two discrete dances to advertise food sources?". Animal Behaviour. 75 (4): 1291–1300. doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2007.09.032. S2CID 15037480.
  6. ^ von Frisch K (1967). The Dance Language and Orientation of Bees. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.