Bee dances

[buzz lightyear]

Hi all
I’m doing a talk on bee dances at our local branch in a month or so. I’ve got the book by Tania Munz on Karl Von Frisch and the discovery of the honeybee language , but was looking for something a tad more recent and succinct if possible. Can any of you help.
Oh, and a Happy New Year when it comes [emoji219][emoji481][emoji16]


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[masterBK]

I would start by reading chapter 9 Communication and orientation in Mark Winstons book "The biology of the honey bee" as it summarises the work of several researchers on waggle, round and transitional dances and also includes info on some of the lesser known dances such as

the Jostling run
• Returning successful scouts run at and push aside their nest mates
• May be used to alert bees on a comb that a waggle/round dance is about to be performed.

DVAV Dance (dorso-ventral, abdominal vibration) also called vibration or shaking signal (By Seeley)
• Bee vibrates abdomen dorso-ventrally whilst grasping another bee with her legs for 1-2 secs at 16Hz
• Bees being shaken are recruited to move to the dance floor and observe waggle dances
• (or get recruited to swarming).
• Also performed on queens during queen cell construction (possibly inhibits activity and stops her breaking them down)
• DVAV dances stop just before the swarm issues from the hive
• Queen cells are increasingly vibrated as they mature as a way of controlling queen emergence & probably has a role in controlling casts.

Tremble dance
• Carried out by returning nectar laden forager if she experiences a long unloading delay
before a house bee takes her regurgitated nectar from her
• She shakes her body back and forth while rotating her body axis by 50 degrees every second or so and while walking slowly across the comb
• This dance is used to recruit more house bees to switch to receiving nectar from foragers and storing it
• Also inhibits waggle dancing & so stops the recruitment of additional foragers

Buzzing run
• Used just before a swarm issues from a colony, probably to signal the exit of the swarm from the hive.
• Also triggers the swarm to alight from a temporary clustering location to fly to its new nest site.
• Worker bees run in a straight line across comb, buzzing (rapid vibration of its wings) until it collides with another bee and touch antenna when the buzzing increases
• When they break apart they both run off in opposite directions, resulting in increased activity on the colony

Shaking dance
• Performed by a worker that requires grooming
• While being otherwise stationary (ie not walking) the worker shakes her body rapidly from side to side to induce nearby workers to come and groom her

 

[Beefriendly]

Interesting story about Karl Von Frisch and his students...they wanted him to prove his quite controversial theory...they hid a nectar source and he had to tell them direction and distance based on bees waggle dances.
Which he did.

Don't forget about the dances on the surfaces of swarms, well covered in "Honey bee Democracy". These, like some of the above, have nothing to do with recruitment to nectar or pollen sources.

 

[GuyNir]

Found this video to have very useful information on this:
https://youtu.be/CgRXu-N2VLA
(Middle of the video, including some good examples)

 

[charlievictorbravo]

The book Bf has suggested, Tom Seeley's "Honeybee Democracy" describes at great length how the the waggle dance is used by multiple scouts to "advertise" their finds to the swarm. The longer and more vigorous the dance is, the better the prospective nest location. By this means the better sites come to the attention of the other scouts who go and find this "wonder" site and if they're impressed, they go back to the bivouacked swarm and perform a dance with a duration and vigour equal to their estimation of the prospective site's worth as a permanent home.

Seeley's book explores the permanent-nest-finding protocols of bees, much of which is communicated by means of waggle dances. His book would provide enough information for several presentations - good luck!

CVB