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Subject:
From:
"Peter L. Borst" <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 5 Jun 2008 07:02:55 -0400
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Now, for something completely diffeent

> Honey bees from different continents can communicate by learning to translate the language encoded in one another's dance moves, according to new research. It's the first time communication between honey-bee species has been established and shows that bees have various cognitive skills and the ability to learn from one another. An international science team, including Australian National University researchers, discovered that a mixed hive of Asian (Apis cerana) and European (Apis mellifera) honey bees quickly overcame language differences.

Bees can communicate by dancing
http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/

* * *

> This is the first report of the successful establishment of a mixed-species honeybee colony, with individuals of Apis cerana cerana and Apis mellifera ligustica cohabiting, foraging and carrying out normal hive functions, for the greater part harmoniously, for over 50 days. Several cross-species interactions, such as dance following, trophallaxis and queen tending were observed during this period, indicating that ours was a normally functioning hive. We believe that this is an important breakthrough in the study of honeybees, and that such mixed-species hives will open exciting new avenues of research into various aspects of this social insect's biology.

> We studied details of the dance communication (dance angle, waggle duration and recruitment success) of Acc and Aml in the mixed-species hive. The dance angles were not significantly different between Acc and Aml in the mixed-species hive, which means that both dance dialects indicated the same food source direction. However, the distance-dependent waggle durations were significantly different between Acc and Aml honeybees, regardless of whether they were in a pure colony or the mixed-species colony. The dialect differences of honeybee species are therefore encoded in the difference in waggle duration. Environmental variables, such as wind velocity, temperature and the surrounding landscape can be ruled out, as all bees were made to forage along the same flight path, and all dances for a given experiment, whose waggle durations were analysed, were recorded within a short period of time.

East Learns from West: Asiatic Honeybees Can Understand Dance Language
of European Honeybees
PLoS ONE. 2008; 3(6): e2365.

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