Many years have passed since Dr. Wenner first proposed that honey bees
do not use the "dance language" to find nectar sources, but rather,
they follow odor cues. Since that time, biologists have acknowledged
that scent is an integral part of the dance and at times, the
information in the dance is ignored altogether. This is similar to the
fact that one can easily converse on the phone without seeing the
other person, which means that humans can communicate by auditory
signals alone. It does not, however, prove that visual cues are never
needed.

Often we say, "I would prefer to discuss that in person". Why? Because
the visual cues we pick up and send are crucial to in-depth
communication. Communication in humans is multi-faceted, and so it is
in animals, being comprised of a complex mix of odors, visual and
auditory signals, and physical touching. Underlying the effort to
dismiss animal intelligence is a deep seated bias in favor of human
superiority. Moving past that issue, one may marvel at the complexity
of insect communication and learn how it has evolved over millions of
years:

Madeleine Beekman (whom I had the pleasure to meet when she was
working at Tom Seeley's lab) recently wrote:

> All honeybee species make use of the waggle dance to communicate the direction and distance to both food sources and potential new nest sites. When foraging, all species face an identical problem: conveying information about profitable floral patches. However, profound differences in nesting biology (some nest in cavities while others nest in the open, often on a branch or a cliff face) may mean that species have different requirements when dancing to advertise new nest sites.

> In cavity nesting species, nest sites are a precise location in the landscape: usually a small opening leading to a cavity in a hollow tree. Dances for cavities therefore need to be as precise as possible. In contrast, when the potential nest site comprises a tree or perhaps seven a patch of trees, precision is less necessary. Similarly, when a food patch is advertised, dances need not be very precise, as floral patches are often large, unless they are so far away that recruits need more precise information to be able to locate them. In this paper, we study the dance precision of the open-nesting red dwarf bee Apis florea.

> By comparing the precision of dances for food sources and nest sites, we show that A. florea workers dance with the same imprecision irrespective of context. This is in sharp contrast with the cavity-nesting Apis mellifera that increases the precision of its dance when advertising a potential new home. We suggest that our results are in accordance with the hypothesis that the honeybees' dance communication initially evolved to convey information about new nest sites and was only later adapted for the context of foraging.

"Dance precision of Apis florea -- clues to the evolution of the
honeybee dance language?"
Madeleine Beekman (2008) Behav Ecol Sociobiol
DOI 10.1007/s00265-008-0554-z

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