Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 4.
Waggle-dance communication
flight to take and the value of the source, and they also gain a taste of the nectar, which
can give them an odour cue.
Another dance consists of the bee performing a circular movement. This is believed to
tell attending bees that there is nectar near to the hive and to go out and look in the
surrounding area.
Understanding the waggle dance
The significance of this dance was really discovered by professor Karl von Frisch in
Germany in the 1960s. His topics,
The Dancing Bees
and
Bees: Their Chemical Senses
and Language
, describe the experiments he used and they are worth reading. The latter
was in fact the first book I ever read on bees, and the only reason I bought it was that I
love topics and here was a hardback for only £6.95. How it changed things!
