J. Waggle wrote:
>In honeybees, I understand that the bee dance is different for nearby sources. 

REPLY:

> Through a series of seminal experiments, Karl von Frisch decoded the dance
language of the honey bee. Since then, it has been widely accepted that
there are two distinct types of dances: the round dance, for advertising
profitable food sources less than 50m away, and the waggle dance, for
announcing food sources more than 50m away. These two dances are usually
considered separate entities, two “words” in the bees’ language, mainly
because of the apparent lack of directional information in the round dance. 

> However, recent work suggests that round dances may contain directional
information, blurring the line between round and waggle dances. We
investigated the distinction between the round and waggle dances by training
honey bees to feeders at varying distances from the hive and video recording
and analyzing the subsequent dances. 

> For every dance, the following components were measured: (1) waggle phase
duration, (2) form and pattern of dancer movement during a circuit, (3)
angular orientation of individual waggle phases, and (4) divergence angle
(the angle between the directions of sequential waggle phases). 

> Our data suggest that information about direction is encoded the same way
in the round dance as in the waggle dance – the waggle-run direction
relative to vertical indicates the food-source direction relative to the
sun’s azimuth, although there is more ‘noise’ in the directional component
of the round dance than the waggle dance.

> This study shows that that the round dance and the waggle dance are parts
of a continuum, that there is no abrupt switch between the two, and that it
is most meaningful to view the bees as having just one (adjustable)
recruitment signal: the waggle dance.

Kathryn E. Gardner, et al (2006) "The Round and Waggle Dances of the Honey
Bee: One Dance or Two?"

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