Bees Can Dance!

Honeybees do some pretty amazing things, but did you know they can dance? One dance in particular is called the waggle dance. The dance is a type of figure-eight dance the honeybee performs to communicate with others (see video).

When foragers leave their hives and find a particularly good source of nectar or water, they communicate that information to other foragers in their colony. They perform the waggle dance on the honeycomb by walking in a straight-line while shaking their abdomen vigorously and buzzing with their wings. This movement allows the bee to communicate the distance of the food through the speed and distance of the movement.

Next, the bee will align their body with the exact direction of the food source in relation to the sun. To the human eye it looks like a figure eight but to the colony, it is an exact location on resources.