The Bee and Her Grooves

“If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then the man would only have four years of life left.”

Many of you might remember this as one of the quotes of probably the most recognizable scientist of 20th century, Albert Einstein. Although there is no substantial proof that the famous German physicist ever said that, still this does not change the fact that honey bees are the most important pollinator on the planet. With almost 1/3rd of total pollination of food crops and commercially important plants done by bees, our dependency on them is immense.

We all know that honey bees produce honey by the nectar collected from flowers. But have you ever wondered how these tiny bees can actually do such a complex task? Well it is obviously clear that some form of communication is absolutely required to effectively collect and process the nectar. Apart from the pheromones that these bees use for communicating, another means of communication that the honey bees, and many other bees, employ is DANCING.  Yes you read it right, Dancing.

 

Fun Fact: 

The study of bees is called Melittology.

 

The honey bees use dancing patterns for conveying information to other hive-mates. The patterns can be used to provide info not only about the exact location of the nectar rich flower, but it also tells the quality and abundance of the nectar.

 

Fun Fact: 

It takes about 556 workers to gather 1 pound of honey from about 2 million flowers.

Let us first understand a beehive hierarchy. Like most of the insects, honey bees form a strict and straight foreword society where every unit is assigned with a specific role. The heart of every hive is the queen (1 per hive), the main female responsible for the continuation of the hive and who enjoys the luxury of mating. After the queen there are drones, who are the males, meant to pass on the genes and simply die. Then there are the workers, responsible for all the hive-chores, nectar collection and hive protection duties. The queen is a little larger than her subjects.

Karl Ritter Von Frisch, Austrian ethologist, Nobel laureate and ForMemRS (Foreign Member of Royal Society), sometimes acknowledged as the father of bee dance, received his Nobel Prize in the field of Physiology and Medicines in 1973 for the research he conducted on behaviour of bees and the detailed information of the bee dance that he gathered from a series of experiments. Initially, Frisch described two different kinds of dances, namely, the circle or round dance and the waggle dance.

The circle dance was understood as a sign of food source located in close proximity. The forager would move in circles alternatively. The forager bee will go clockwise direction and then in anti- clockwise direction. This dance indicates that the food source is in 50m of range. Although, more recent studies disapproves the idea of such dance, and states that there is only one dance that accurately encodes both, the distance and the quality of the food source. That dance is called the Waggle dance.

Waggle dance resembles figure ‘8’. As you can see in the figure, the bee continuously forms a figure eight while waggling through the center of the figure. Longer the waggle length, which is, the length of center of the figure eight, farther the food source is. The excitement or the intensity of the waggle specifies the quality of the nectar and the abundance. In most of the species, 1 second of waggle indicates around 1 km of distance. The dancing bee dances in such an orientation that the angle of the dancing axis is similar to the angle at which other bees should travel with respect to sun, to reach the destination. To understand better, take a look at the gif below. 

You must be wondering how will they get the angle when the sun is covered with clouds. Well mother nature gifted gold makers a set of compound eyes with ability to detect UV rays, which of course can easily penetrate through the clouds. Another question that might come to your mind is, what if the source flower is too far and the angle of with respect to sun changes as the time passes by. To solve this problem, the bees utilize their internal clock, that enables them to adjust the angle with respect to the sun. some studies show that bees can even learn the changes occurring due to seasons, and can calculate the exact angle accordingly.

Fun Fact: 

Honeybee's wings stroke 11400 times per minute, thus making their distinctive buzz.

 

Now the last question that would probably come to your mind is why the round dance was disapproved. The answer lies in the waggle dance. Since we know that the center of the figure eight becomes shorter with the decrease in the length, the waggle dance becomes more and more compact. This changes the form of dance for the food sources in close vicinity of the hive. Also, it is studied that for these close range sources, the movement becomes less profound, making it to appear as a round dance instead of the distinctive figure eight dance. This complete transformation of waggle dance to round dance is done through a series of changes. These dances that come in between the round dance and the profound figure eight waggle dance are called transitional dances. As mentioned earlier, the round dance, or the transitional dance, are no longer treated as different dances, but are just the manifestation of the waggle dance, when the food is too close.

Apart from the dance, honey bees also use pheromones to exchange information. The scents that the forager bees pick up during foraging also give information to other hive-mates. What we sometimes think are just some random movements which the little insects make, are actually pre-planned and calculated. The discipline and dedication that these tiny bees display are exemplary.

Team Knowledge Villa hopes you learned something new. Feel free to use comment section…