Quoted material:

> With all the elements in place, however, these bees [Melipona panamica]
seem able to communicate a location in three dimensions, Nieh points out. In
contrast, honeybees don't seem to indicate height. The difference may
reflect their habitats. Stingless bees forage in tropical forests where they
may dine on flowers blooming high in the canopy or fruit that has fallen to
the floor. Most honeybees live in temperate regions instead and gather
nectar and pollen relatively near the ground.

> Both the honeybee and stingless-bee systems, Nieh notes, mix presumably
simple methods, like scents, with fancier ones, like specialized motion.
"There are many ways information can get garbled," he says. "It's good to be
redundant."

> The amount of information that honeybees, bumblebees, and stingless bees
exchange inside the nest has inspired Nieh to speculate on the advantage of
elaborate communications. The supposedly simpler methods, trailing scent
droplets like bread crumbs, for example, could tip off competitors as well
as the crew from the home nest. What happens inside a nest, however, becomes
much harder for foreigners to observe.

> Advantageous as that shift inside might be, it does require some way to
abstractly represent the larger world. Such a system might develop under
pressures of intense competition from other hives, Nieh speculates. Or, to
put it another way, representational language could be just one way of
countering espionage.

see:
http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/sn_arc99/4_3_99/bob1.htm

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