Bees' dance points way to nectar supply

Scientists have finally proved that the famous "waggle dance" of bees - where they gyrate excitedly in circles - does indeed show other bees where to find the richest supply of sugary nectar.

The theory was proposed by Austrian zoologist Karl von Frisch in the 1960s but was disputed by scientists who argued that it lacked a convincing quantitative description to test the effectiveness of the dance.

To test the von Frisch theory, scientists from Rothamsted Research in Harpenden, England, attached miniature radar devices to bees that had been captured - or "recruited" - when they had just left the hive in search of food.

The scientists set up an artificial feeder 200m from the hive and were able to demonstrate that the waggle dance performed by bees returning to the hive indicated the direction other bees should fly - in relation to the position of the sun in the sky - in order to find the food.

"Most recruited bees released from the hive almost immediately undertook a straight flight of direction and length that brought them directly into the vicinity of the feeder," the scientists say in the journal Nature.

In a parallel experiment, scientists captured another set of bees that were leaving the hive and took them to a release point about 200m away.

These bees still flew in a direction that they would have flown if they had left the hive untouched.

"Their flights were thus exactly like those of recruits released at the hive, and similarly often extended to search behaviour at the expected feeder position," the scientists say.

When these bees were unable to find their source of food, they returned to their release site in search of the hive and only when they could not locate it at that site did they look elsewhere and eventually find their way home.

"In summary, we have provided the first quantitative and direct description of the degree to which recruits translate information encoded in the waggle dance into flight to the vicinity of the designated destination."

The scientists say the results should be accepted as final vindication of the von Frisch theory.

- INDEPENDENT