Explanation and Importance of Honey Bee Waggle Dance, Communication and Honey Production
Importance of Honey Bee Waggle Dance explained here in this article. In fact, Bee dance communication has very important role in Honey Production. Besides this, there is the primary role of scout honey bee. Moreover, There is specific dance language of honey bee. Dance of honey bee communicates other bees. Furthermore, pattern of this dance directs the other bees the direction of the source of nectar. On the other hand, there are different honey bee dance types like circular dance, 8 direction dance etc. However, each waggledance has its own language.
ایگری ٹورازم اور آرگینک پراڈکٹس
جگنو روشنی کیسے پیدا کرتا ہے؟ جگنو کے حوالے سے دلچسپ حقائق پر مشتمل ڈاکٹر مجاہد حسین کی تحریر
مختلف جانوروں میں بچے کی پیدائش کا حیران کن عمل، ڈاکٹر مجاہد حسین کی دلچپسپ تحریر
Honeybee is a small but interesting creature of Allah Almighty whose discipline, memory, perseverance and system of messengers and messages are exemplary. The greatest achievement of the honeybee (Apis mellifera) is the production of honey, which science is unable to produce despite so much progress and research and experiments today.
Collection of Nectar and the Role of Scout Bees
Among the stages that the bee has to go through to make the honey that everyone loves, the most important is to suck the nectar of flowers and collect it in the honeycomb. For this, the scout bee flies at a speed of 24 kilometers per hour to find flowers full of nectar and then returns and tells the rest of the bees in the hive about the location of those flowers.
Thanks to the sense of touch and vibration, this work is made possible through a waggle dance because neither the worker bee can speak nor can all the other bees hear it. Similarly, this bee cannot even tell by gestures in a dark hive, and in such a rush, the other bees cannot even see any such activity because there are about twenty thousand bees in a hive.
Memory and Foraging Behavior
A worker bee goes to suck the nectar of about seven thousand flowers about ten times a day and travels many miles for this. It stores the scent of these flowers in its memory along the way and thanks to this memory, it finds its way back.
Communication Through Honey Bee Waggle Dance
A worker bee performs a fluttering dance when it returns to the hive after finding a new food source about 300 feet or more away. This bee tells in detail in which direction the nectar-bearing flowers are located, how far away they are, and how nectar-bearing they are.
For this purpose, the honeybee has two amazing qualities.
Solar Compass
The first is that their eyes are a kind of solar compass because they can determine the direction of the sun by looking at polarized ultraviolet rays.
Internal Biological Clock
The second is that they have a finely tuned internal clock that allows them to estimate the new position of the sun while flying in the air. Thanks to this, they can estimate not only the current position of the sun, but also weather changes and latitude, despite staying in a dark hive for several hours.
Use of Gravity and Directional Language for Honey Bee Waggle Dance
In a dark vertical hive, these bees have a natural common reference point, gravity, in addition to the sun, on the basis of which they determine the direction of up and down.
Based on these two constant references, they develop a simple language according to which the upward direction indicates the location of the sun, and thus, the angle of the bee’s dance, compared to the upward direction, tells the other bees which direction from the sun they will find the juicy flowers.
For example, if the bee dances upward, it means that the other bees will find the source of flowers by flying in the direction of the sun, and if the bee dances 90 degrees from the upward direction, it means that the source of flowers will be found by flying 90 degrees from the sun, and so on.
Distance Information and Duration of Honey Bee Waggle Dance
The waggle duration of the dance provides information about the distance from the hive to the flowers/food storage. Typically, worker bees waggle from one to a hundred times in one dance. The farther the food source is from the hive, the longer the waggle duration. Each second of increase in waggle increases the distance by about 750 meters.
Intensity of Honey Bee Waggle Dance and Nectar Availability
The more nectar-rich the food source, the more vigorous the dance will be. If the food source is about 50 to 100 meters away from the hive, the dance’s fluttering duration will be shortened to a circular dance.
A worker bee returns the same amount of energy it expends on its way back in the form of fluttering; therefore, if a bee flies against a strong wind toward a flower source and returns, it is likely to flutter more than it actually did, and vice versa.
Why is it Called the Figure-8 Dance?
The fluttering dance is also called the figure-8 dance because the bee moves straight across the hive at a certain angle for a certain distance, for a certain time, and then turns right or left to return to the starting point, and then repeats the movement, appearing to form a figure-eight.
Nobel Prize-Winning Discovery
It should be noted that in 1973, Austrian scientist Karl Ritter von Frisch was awarded the Nobel Prize for his research on the fluttering dance of honeybees.
