Honeybee

All about honey bees , social organisation and bee dances

1. The Honeybee
Dance

2. Who are the honeybees?
-Order: Hymenoptera
-Most common species: Apis Mellifera
-Major producers of honey and
beeswax and primary pollinators for
over 50 fruits and vegetables
-Live in a beehive, made of golden
combs and an array of hexagonal cells
made of thin beeswax
-Up to 20 000 individuals live in a hive
and work together in a specialized
social organization
Apis Mellifera

3. The Colony
The Honeybee colony consists of different kinds of bees that all
work together to create a unique social structure. These bees
include:
-The Queen Bee
-The Drones
-The Worker Bees
-House/Nurse Bees
-Field/Forager Bees

4. Mature Worker Bee
Pollen basket
Straight stinger
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE-8QuBDkkw

5. The Dance
-Unique animal communication system
-A bee can communicate the location of a profitable food source to its
followers
-What the bee communicates:
-Distance and Direction
-Odour
-Presence of a profitable source
“One of the greatest discoveries of behavioural science”-Gould 1995

6. Karl von Frisch (1886 -1982)
-Austrian Ethologist
-Nobel Prize 1973 in Physiology
or Medicine
-”The dance, language and
orientation of bees” 1993
-First to discover the dance of
the honeybees

7. How von Frisch Discovered the Dance
-Initially studied vision and perception of honeybees
-Placed a sugar solution away from the hive
-Observed the bees behaviour back at the hive
-Saw her perform off movements moving in circles, Round
Dance
-Noted how far away the sugar source was from the hive
-Moved the sugar source further away from the hive
-Observed the waggle dance
-Frisch regarded the Round dance and Waggle dance as
separate, not the case today

8. The two dances that von Frisch first observed in honeybees

9. The Waggle Dance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE-8QuBDkkw
-Once a bee finds a profitable food
source she returns to her hive and
seeks out other individuals on the
dance floor
-She walks straight ahead on the
vertical surface of the comb waggling
her body
-Stops the waggle run, turns left or
right to make semicircular return run
back to her starting point
-She then repeats the waggle run
-Each waggle dance is made up of a
series of waggle runs and return runs

10. -The follower bees are able to pick up on this signal and successfully
leave the hive and find this exact food source that was being
communicated
-There is also a scent passed along to the followers to aid in their
journey to find the food source

11. -When von Frisch first made his
discovery he thought that the only
thing the follower bees picked up
on was the scent of the profitable
food source
-He soon made a remarkable
discovery, the follower bees would
only search for flower with the same
scent in the exact same place as the
dancer
-The followers could somehow get
this exact information from the
dancers
-Frisch realized there was more to
this waggle dance then he initially
thought
-How are these honeybees
able to give such precise
directions to a profitable
food source inside the dark hive?

12. How it Works
1.Distance Coding: the duration of each waggle run is
proportional to the length of the distance to the profitable food
source
1 s = ~ 1 km

13. 2. Direction Coding: the angle of the waggle run represents the angle
of the journey relative to the sun
For example: if the bee heads 30°
to the right of the vertical the
feeding place is 30°to the right
of the sun

14. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7ijI-g4jHg

15. Which Bees Acquire the Information?
-In a study done by Judd (1994), it was determined which bees following a
dancer successfully acquire the information and are able to go and find
the food source
-The followers position relative to the dancer is the key factor in
determining whether or not the message is conveyed
-Follower must be within a 30º arc behind the dancer
-This is because of the sound the waggle dancer produces in the dark
hive
-Example:
Abdomen swings right, the followers on the right can pick up on the
sound but as soon as the abdomen swings left they can no longer detect
it. This means that the follower be must be directly behind the dancer ( or
within a 30º arc) to be in the range of the sound from the waggle dance

16. The presence of predators
-When foragers return from a rewarding source they perform the waggle
dance more than average, but what if they return from a profitable but
dangerous source?
-In a study done by Abbott and Dukas (2009), it was shown that honeybees
are on the lookout for predators and are always trying to protect the hive
-Results from this study show that the honey bee can change its dance
pattern if it returns from a patch that was profitable but also contained
predators.
-How this study was performed
-Result: the presence of a cue of predation
depresses the dance behaviour in honeybees
-This study suggests honeybees can
integrate two types of information into one
signal

17. The Condition of the Dance Floor
-Comb vibration is am important channel of
communication for honeybees
-Study done by Tautz (1996) 2 different
dance surface conditions were tested
-Open empty combs or capped brood
combs
-Results show that there is higher
recruitment success of followers on open
empty combs compared to capped brood
combs

18. The Rules of the Dance
-Study done by behavioural scientist Crist (2004)
the rules of the waggle dance were outlined
1. Dance for the most required resource
2. If there are no urgent requirements in the hive
they will dance for nectar
3. Only dance for a profitable reliable food source
4. Exception if the hive is in need
5. Designated area for dancing in the hive
6. Honeybees never dance alone

19. -Honeybees are remarkable insects that have a very organized social structure,
worker bees work to maintain the hive and make sure the queen bee is always happy
-A unique feature of their social life is the waggle dance they perform to
communicate the location of a profitable food source
-The waggle dance was discovered by Karl von Frisch and has been since studied by
many other scientists
-It is performed via distance coding and direction coding and can give the exact
directions to a profitable patch
-Many studies have shown that aspects of the dance exist and scientists know that
the movements of the waggle dance result in direction to a profitable food source
but, because of the fact that no direct
evidence exists on how this information is received by other bee, many scientists are
skeptical of the true meaning behind these waggle movements
Overview

20. REFERENCES
Abbott, K. R., Dukas, R. (2009) . Honeybees Consider Flower Danger in their Waggle Dance. Animal
Behaviour, 78, 633-635.
Beekman, M., Lew, J. (2007) . Foraging in Honeybees –When does it pay to dance?. Behavioural Ecology,
255-262.
Crist, E. (2004) . Can an Insect Speak? : The Case of the Honeybee Language. Social Studies of Science,
34(7), 7-41.
Hasegawa, Y., Ikeno, H. (2011) .How Do Honeybees Attract Nestmates Using Waggle Dances in Dark and
Noisy Hives?. Plos One, 6(5), 1-7.
Seely, D. T. (1995) . The Wisdom of the Hive: The Social Physiology of Honeybee Colonies. Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press.
Seely, D. T. (2010) . Honeybee Democracy. Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Tautz, J. (1996) . Honeybee Waggle Dance: Recruitment Depends On the Dance Floor. The Journal of
Experimental Biology, 199, 1375-1381.

21. http://www.librarything.com/work/3983656http://www.flickr.com/photos/autanex/519742656/
http://entomology.unl.edu/beekpg/tidings/btid2004/btdmar2004.htm
http://naturescrusaders.wordpress.com/2008/09/27/bees-can-dance-and-understand-other-bees%E2%80%99-language/
http://www.life.com/image/53372523
http://visual.merriam-webster.com/animal-kingdom/insects-arachnids/honeybee/morphology-honeybee-worker_1.php
http://ibm.newconceptinfosys.com/imagegalerysecond.php?imageID=2
http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/entomology/apiculture/dance_tutorial.html
http://straightfromthefarm.net/2008/05/16/bee-keeping-intro/
http://www.tolweb.org/treehouses/?treehouse_id=4421
http://newsroom.ucr.edu/307
http://synthesize-this.blogspot.com/2010_10_01_archive.html
http://www.cyberbee.net/biology/ch6/dance2.html
http://www.animalbehavioronline.com/frisch.html
http://www.bee-hexagon.net/en/gibran.htm
http://www.bee-hexagon.net/en/gibran.htm
Image References

22. Questions