Chapter 6. Behavioral Communications

6.1. The round dance

When food is close and honey bee workers do not need to communicate the direction, they perform the round dance, essentially saying "there is food closeby, get out and find the food, which smells like this." They at the same time dispense a sample of the nectar that they just collected from that source. The round dance contains no directional nor distance information, but merely indicating there is food closeby.

How close is closeby? It actually varies with each strain of bees. For Carniolan bees, any food closer than 80 meters will be indicated by the round dance. For Italian bees, it is only 6 meters!

The image at left indicates the pathway of the round dance. The Video at the right side shows the actual round dance in motion (source: pbs.org). Click on the play botton ">" to see the video.

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