Phil Veldhuis posted an article about testing the bee dance.
 
I don't have enough experience to suggest how the design of his experiment
would work but have recently stumbled across 2 points that may be relevant.
 
1) I borrowed a book about bees recently that discussed the habits of many
different species.  In a section about the dance it mentioned the different
dialects of the bee dance which was racially determined.
 
Bees use the round dance for short distances and use the waggle dance for
longer distances.  The range at which the bees change from round to waggle
changes from one race to the next.
 
In a colony of mixed races, there is great confusion when the flowers are at
a distance close to this range because each race uses it own interpretation.
As I recall, there was no problem well beyond the range (or well within in).
 
There was no discussion about whether the bee eventually worked out a common
interpretation.  Given that a foraging bee has only 3 or 4 weeks of life in
which to reverse an instinct developed by millions of years of evolution, I
suspect the such a common sense compromise is unlikely.
 
There was no discussion about what happens when a queen from one race mates
with a drone from another.
 
Note: The book is a layman's summary of some of the interesting points and
should not be regarded as the last word on the subject.  If ever I meat the
authors, I have a great many more questions for them.
 
 
 
2) At a recent meeting, Dr Cheng quoted some observations by Von Frisch.
The bee dance clearly indicated that some flowers were at distance X in
direction Y (straight line of flight).  However the straight line of flight,
was obstructed by a high mountain.  None of th bees tried to fly over the
mountain.  They all chose to fly around it (which nearly double the flying
distance).  There was no attempt by the returning bees to give "navigation
advice".
Regards
 
Chris Allen