I don't know how many people out there still care about the dance
language controversy (maybe 1 or 2). However, reading the little book
"Communication Among Social Bees" by Martin Lindauer (1971. Harvard
University Press), I stumbled upon a very interesting little fact.

The book is devoted mostly to the honey bee (Apis mellifera) but there
is a section on work with stingless bees (Trigona spp). These bees do
not communicate with dancing and lead their nest mates by marking a
scent trail. Hence, they could not lead recruits across water until
Lindauer strung a rope with leaves across a pond, which the bees used
to make a scent trail.

Lindauer shows that the stingless bees' use of odor trails can be used
to lead nest mates in a vertical direction as well as horizontal. He
set a feeding station on a tower about 65 feet up. Stingless bees
could bring recruits to it (88 bees in 30 minutes). Honey bees could
not bring recruits to the top of the tower.

The dance language only contains horizontal (2 dimensional)
information and so completely fails when the food source is not on or
near the ground. They have no way of indicating a food source is far
above the ground, so the recruits follow the direction to the base of
the tower and look there. If they could use scents as well as the
stingless bees do, they would have found the food source a mere 65
feet away.

-- 
Peter L. Borst
Danby, NY  USA
42.35, -76.50

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