THE CRAZY DANCE in which a single bee may often be seen to indulge on the comb, whirling about in a circle and making a tremulous motion with its wings, is supposed by a writer in British Bee Journal to be an endeavor to get rid of pollen dust. I don't know, but I doubt. At times when all the field-bees are bringing in pollen, the dancers seem too few. 

Editor: It has generally been stated that the “dancers” are the bees that come in with the first load, either of honey or pollen, and that that is the way the first foragers indicate to the hive bees the intelligence of new honey and new pollen. But there are certain young bees that do a good deal of dancing after coming home with the first load. The first load? how do I know it? No absolute evidence, only I surmise it. 

Early in the season old bees will do considerable dancing as soon as the first pollen comes ; then when both honey and pollen are coming in, young bees only will be dancing ; and so I have guessed that, so far as they were concerned, they believed they were the first to give the important news, but which, to the old foragers, was stale information. 

— Gleanings in Bee Culture, 1900

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THE LANGUAGE OF BEES

TOUCH AND SCENT appear to be the mediums of communication among bees, according to observations made by Prof. Karl von Frisch and described by him in the Munich Medizin Wochenschrift. Our quotations below are from a review in The Scientific American (New York). Von Frisch placed a dish of sugar solution on a table by an open window. Shortly after a chance bee had noted this and flown off with booty therefrom, the dish was crowded with bees. When it was removed they quickly disappeared, save for an occasional reconnoiterer. When a fresh dish was set out they quickly reappeared in quantities. By touching the back of each bee with a spot of color, the experimenter then perceived that subsequent bees had been sent, and not escorted. We read:

· "The conduct of the rediscoverer on her return to the hive was next noted. She first gave over her plunder to the workers, and then executed a curious dance, describing circles and other figures. Her audience watched her attentively and attempted to touch her. When one of the marked bees succeeded in this, the latter at once made her exit and flew to the feeding place; but the unmarked bees soon ceased to pay her any attention. It appears that there is here some means of communication based upon touch rather than upon sight or hearing; and that it is adequate for giving information as to the presence or ahsence of food, but inadequate to give its location unless it be already known to the recipient of the message.

"Experiments with two dishes of food at a considerable distance apart verified this. As before, after they had once been discovered the dishes were removed and ultimately replaced, but when replaced, the 'white' dish only was filled, the ‘yellow' one being left empty. The 'white' dish was rediscovered by a 'white' bee; and when the latter returned to the hive, not only the 'white' but also the ‘yellow' bees responded to her dance, left the hive and flew to their respective dishes, the ‘yellow' bees of course having the search in vain. As before, unmarked bees ignore the dancer.

“That there is a little more flexibility to the signal system than this might indicate appeared when natural conditions were imitated, linden and acacia blossoms being offered respectively to groups of bees accustomed to seek these. The dancing linden bee now occasioned excitement only among the linden bees, and not among the acacia group. The same distinction was made when two dishes of sugar were differently perfumed, suggesting that scent rather than actual modification of the signals may have been responsible. When blotting paper saturated with sugarwater was used instead of the dishes, the bees found some difficulty in sucking the fluid up, and returned only half laden. They did not then trouble to perform the dance, showing that this is reserved for exceptionally rich finds."

— The Literary Digest, 1922

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Note that this second part is almost exactly 100 years ago. In fact, one might readily suppose that von Frisch made his observations by 1921 and wrote about them later

PLB

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