The Dance of the
Honeybee
Do you know that honeybees perform the dance of the
honeybee?
Do you know why?
Honeybees can use the power of dance to communicate with bees
from the other side of the world, according to new
research that suggests the insects are able to learn "foreign"
languages.
The world's nine honeybee species separated about 30 million
years ago and have since developed their own dance
"languages", which scout bees use to share information about
discoveries such as food.
Popular moves include the "round" dance, where bees spin in a
circle when food is close by. The more sophisticated waggle" manoeuvre, used to indicate the distance and direction
of far-off food sources, involves a body shake by the
bees in the middle of running figure-eight loops.
While it was known that members of a honeybee colony exchange
information through dance, a team of scientists from
Australia, China and Germany have shown for the first time that
these dance languages can be translated across bee
species.
The researchers created a mixed colony of thousands of Asian and
European honeybees, and observed that the two
species — the most geographically distant — could learn to
understand each other's dance dialect. After a period of
adjustment, the two species were able to work together and share
information to gather food, and Asian honeybees
learned to interpret the dance moves of European forager bees to
reach feeding sites.
The study also confirmed that the two species had distinct
dialects, as the European honeybee, or Apis mellifera,
performed a much shorter "waggle" dance for any given distance
than the Asian honeybee, Apis cerana.
"We have direct evidence that these two species of bees have
different dialects but can understand each other and
communicate to each other," said Dr Shaowu Zhang , of the
Australian National University.
"The dance language of honeybees is among the best-studied
communication systems in the animal kingdom.
Nevertheless, surprises are still possible, as we have shown."Dr Zhang said the work showed that two species of honeybees can
"peacefully live together". He said the findings
would help improve understanding of animal communication and
social learning. The research was published recently in
the PLoS ONE journal.
I am glad we have people such as Dr Zhang who is prepared to use
his time and skill in studying bees. I have the time but not the
skill so my input will have to remain the planting of flowers in
my garden and looking fondly at the bees foraging away.
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