"...this winter heard for the first time about a *Tremble Dance* done by the
bees to indicate a food source to avoid. Can any of you learned nice people
expand on this dance."

Information on the Tremble Dance can be found on the web and in a book by
Thomas D. Seeley "The Wisdom of the Hive". Basically, the Tremble dance is a
nectar processor recruitment dance performed by returning foragers. When a
returning forager searches for a receiver bee and cannot find one for a
prolonged period of time (I think I remember 50+ seconds is defined as
prolonged), the forager performs a Tremble Dance to recruite additional
processors. I have included an excerpt from Thomas Seeley's site below with
additional information.
http://www.nbb.cornell.edu/neurobio/seeley/seeley.html

A colony adjusts the percentage of its workers engaged in nectar reception
in relation to forage abundance. When a colony boosts its nectar collecting
rate colony it also needs to increase its nectar processing rate to prevent
a bottleneck in the overall process of nectar acquisition. The principal
mechanism by which additional receiver bees are activated is the production
of tremble dances by returning foragers when they experience long search
times to find receiver bees. These striking dances are performed throughout
the nest and activate primarily unemployed, middle-aged bees to the task of
nectar reception. Tremble dances and waggle dances therefore play
complementary roles in keeping a colony's rates of nectar collecting and
processing well matched. Both dances are produced by returning foragers, by
whereas waggle dances are produced when the search time is low and raise the
collecting rate, tremble dances are produced when the search time is high
and raise the processing rate.

Ken Haller
Arlington Heights, Illinois USA
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