How Honey Bees Communicate
Honey bees make use of five senses throughout their daily lives; however, honey
bees have additional communication aids at their disposal. Two of the methods by
which honey bees communicate are of particular interest. One is chemical, the other
choreographic.
Honey bee pheromones
Pheromones are chemical scents that animals produce to trigger behavioral
responses from the other members of the same species. Honey-bee pheromones
provide the glue that holds the colony together. The three castes of bees produce
various pheromones at various times to stimulate specific behaviors.
Here are just a few basic facts about the ways pheromones help bees communicate:
Certain queen pheromones (known as queen substance) let the entire colony
know that the queen is in residence and stimulate many worker bee activities.
Outside of the hive, the queen pheromones act as a sex attractant to potential
suitors (male drone bees). They also regulate the drone (male bee) population in
the hive.
Queen pheromones stimulate many worker bee activities, such as comb
building, brood rearing, foraging, and food storage.
The worker bees at the hives entrance produce pheromones that help guide
foraging bees back to their hive. The Nassanoff gland at the tip of the worker
bees abdomen is responsible for this alluring scent.
Worker bees produce alarm pheromones that can trigger sudden and decisive
aggression from the colony.
The colonys brood (developing bee larvae and pupae) secretes special
pheromones that help worker bees recognize the broods gender, stage of
development, and feeding needs.
How honey bees dance
Perhaps the most famous and fascinating language of the honey bee is
communicated through a series of dances done by foraging worker bees who return
to the hive with news of nectar, pollen, or water. The worker bees dance on the comb
using precise patterns. Depending upon the style of dance, a variety of information is
shared with the honey bees sisters. Theyre able to obtain remarkably accurate
information about the location and type of food the foraging bees have discovered.
Two common types of dances are the so-called round dance and the waggle
dance. The round dance communicates that the food source is near the hive (within
10-80 yards).
For a food source found at a greater distance from the hive, the worker bee performs
the waggle dance. It involves a shivering side-to-side motion of the abdomen, while
the dancing bee forms a figure eight. The vigor of the waggle, the number of times it
is repeated, the direction of the dance, and the sound the bee makes communicates
amazingly precise information about the location of the food source.
The dancing bees pause between performances to offer potential recruits a taste of
the goodies they bring back to the hive. Combined with the dancing, the samples
provide additional information about where the food can be found and what type of
flower it is from.
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