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April 2017 - Bees Waggling away.

April 24th, 2017
Bees Waggling away.

This is the first part of a two part look at the ability of bees to communicate information that  forager bees need to find sources of food be these nectar (carbohydrate) or pollen (protein) and water needed to nourish their whole colony.

Firstly it needs to be understood that a colony of bees ,which consists of 4 components, is recognised a being a single organism consisting of:

• Queen - responsible reproduction of sufficient workers to cope with changes that the swarm has to weather through the seasons of lean and plenty, hot and cold.

• Female workers - attend to all the work done to support their colony.

• Drones - responsible for inseminating queen bees that are not from their on colony

• Wax comb - forms the skeleton upon which the colony builds its reproductive womb and food storage.

The queen may have a life span of 3 to 4 years.

The female workers may be regarded as renewing cells of the body and have a typical life span of 6 to 8 weeks depending upon work load stresses.

The drones contribute no nourishment to the colony, instead being consumers of the hard won food brought back by the female foragers and are thus expendable if conditions warrant this such as when there is a dearth period.

A colony is able to cover a large area during the course of the foraging bees collecting food - they will easily fly in a 2km to 3km radius if this is needed but prefer not to have to do so as this consumes more precious resources and places greater strain on them.

Each colony will have a small number of scout bees constantly searching for new food sources.

They move about randomly, within the foraging area around the hive, evaluating any food found to determine whether the new source is superior or inferior to the sources currently being exploited.

If the determination is superior they immediately return to the colony to communicate this to the colony by performing, in an area of the hive, a routine known as the 'Waggle dance.'

Observations of this routine reveal that the dance consists of:

A straight line, at an angle and a number of circles either round or in a figure eight.

If the source is nearer than about about 10 meters then the dance is a circle pattern that is repeated to indicate distance – less repeats equals greater distance.

Distances beyond 10m to about 100m are communicated by a combination of the circular pattern and one that resembles two semi-circles, side by side, as a figure eight.

The number of completed routines again indicating distance – 9 to 10 repeats for 100m while 4  indicates 1500m.
The quality of the food source is communicated by the degree of excitement that the dancing bee exhibits with more excitement indicating a better quality.

The last component to understand is the straight line and the angle that it is given during the routine.

All bees know precisely where the sun is at any given time during the day, even if the sun is obscured by clouds. Using this knowledge to provide a fixed point when emerging from the almost dark hive, the bees will head off at the angle communicated which is an angle to the sun and fly directly to the food source after ensuring that they have sufficient fuel to safely make the journey.

Thus the distance indicated by the waggle dance is as vital as is the angle that needs to be navigated if efficient exploitation of the new source is to be ensured and a surplus is returned to the waiting cells in the combs.

In the instance of some indecision as to the quality of the new source versus current supply, onlooking bees may request a sample from the scout performing the waggle dance, emitting a short squeak by thrumming the comb causing the dancing bee to stop and dole out a sample to her. The doling out of samples is important for the recruitment of foragers who need to be convinced to change their current flight arrangement so the quality as to be better if a change will be made.

References: Frisch (1967), Weiss (1989), Moffett (1990), Sanford (1993) Kirchner (1994)
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