Accent on Natural Landscaping

Donna VanBuecken

  • Home
  • About Me
  • Resources
  • Organizations & Blogs
  • Archives
  • Contact

Why Do Bees Dance?

June 22, 2020

In their search for food, honeybees and bumblebees fly far and wide searching for the best flowers (loaded with nectar) – and when a bee finds what she’s looking for, she returns to the hive to share her find with the other bees by performing a complicated “dance.”

WAGGLE DANCE

Why do the bees dance? In the 1940s, Austrian biologist, Karl Von Frisch, devised an experiment to find out. When the bee arrives back at the hive, she draws the attention of the other bees, and begins moving her body, especially vibrating her abdomen, in a specific set of movements. This “dance” resembles a figure eight as she moves back and forth, over and over. The duration of her dance indicates how far away the flowers are, and she indicates the direction to the flowers by the angle of her dance related to the sun. (The Waggle Dance of the Honeybee)

STOP SIGNAL

Honeybees also can warn their nest mates about dangers they have encountered. If a bee is doing the waggle dance, another bee who had previously encountered danger (such as a wasp or spider) at the location being “described” by the waggling bee, will often approach the dancing bee and butt her head against the dancer to cause a momentary “freeze” – which is seen as a warning by the other bees. Learn more about this discovery by James Nieh, a professor of the University of California-San Diego at The Bee Dance.

   Send article as PDF   

Comments

  1. Cynthia j Donahey says

    June 22, 2020 at 12:18 pm

    Are bumblebees considered native? I have them swarming over a shrub called false goatbeard , which is a huge mass of white flowers right now. It is supposed to be Asian By the way the Medicis introduced North Americans. The presence of The Medicis was taught in the Itallan schools until the American occupation starting in 1944s. Columbus got caught going thru the Straits of Gibraltar and helped the Spanish out three times and was then dumped..

    Reply
    • Donna VanBuecken says

      June 24, 2020 at 7:24 am

      Yes, bumblebees are native to North America, Cynthia — Donna

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Signup button.

Recent Posts

  • OVER-THE-COUNTER NATIVE PLANT SALE MAY 21
  • WOFVA’s NATIVE PLANT SALE MAY 21
  • Recovering America’s Wildlife Act (RAWA)
  • Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame 2022 Inductees
  • Native Landscaping Design

Category Archives

  • Biodiversity
    • Monarchs
    • Pollinators
  • Birds
  • Climate Change
  • Events
  • Fire
  • Funding
  • Garden and Landscape Design
  • Heroes
  • Homestead
    • Recipe
  • Invasive Plants
  • Native plant garden design
  • Native Plants
  • Natural Landscaping
  • Prairie
  • Public Comment Opportunity
  • Railroad
  • The Sky
  • Wellbeing
  • Wetlands
  • Wildflowers
    • Trees & Shrubs
  • Wildlife
    • Wolves
  • Wisconsin
  • Women
  • Woodlands

Copyright 2005-2018
Donna VanBuecken