Honeybees warn of risky flowers

[BKF Admin]

Honeybees warn each other to steer clear of dangerous flowers where predators lurk, scientists discover.

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[grizzly]

Fascinating, good one admin

 

[ribblesbees]

Fascinating, good one admin

Certainly.

It also makes you wonder just how many more secrets these little ladies have.

 

[grizzly]

Being female i should imagine more than we will ever know. or understand.

 

[Hombre]

Surprising as it may seem, an interesting though occurred to me. Please correct any assumptions that I make which are patently not correct.

The vision of bees has a frequency range not totally dissimilar to that of humans, albeit that range is shifted towards the higher frequency - shorter wavelength - end of the band.

So visible red light is as invisible to bees as infra-red is to ourselves. Bees vision extends into the ultra-violet end of the spectrum and they can make use of polarised light to aid navigation.

Great so far. I understand and accept the concept of the waggle dance as being important phenomena which is slowly revealing more facets as time passes and further research continues.

My question, as there just had to be one, is; "In the pitch dark of the hive, what is the mechanism that allows the audience at these waggle dances to see or receive the message being communicated"?

Does the waggle and movement of the dancer somehow modulate the vibrations and the audience somehow perceive the information that is impressed upon vibrations from the dancer felt as shifts of phase that are encoded by the physical motion of the dance?

Even more complicated than thinking upon it as a visible thing.

I don't suppose that bees have cat's eyes or particularly good low light performance?

 

[Hivetool]

My understanding regarding the dances of bees which are carried out on the comb face are;
during the waggle dance movements a train of pulsed sounds is made at the low frequency of, not sure on this bit, 250-300 Hertz, with a pulse duration of 20 milliseconds. These sounds are produced by the wings of the dancing bee.
Follower bees place their antenna very close to the dancers abdomen, where the movements are intense.

That's all I can remember about how communication of the dances inform others the distance and direction.

 

[DrNick]

My understanding regarding the dances of bees which are carried out on the comb face are;
during the waggle dance movements a train of pulsed sounds is made at the low frequency of, not sure on this bit, 250-300 Hertz, with a pulse duration of 20 milliseconds. These sounds are produced by the wings of the dancing bee.
Follower bees place their antenna very close to the dancers abdomen, where the movements are intense.

That's all I can remember about how communication of the dances inform others the distance and direction.

As we know, bees are deaf, but are very aware of vibrations, so I can see the sense in this.