Why Bees Do the Waggle Dance? Ever wondered why? It’s more than just a fun pastime. Their intricate dancing routines hold the secrets to their survival. Now let’s investigate the fascinating field of bee communication.
What are Bees?
These are Insect-Animals or Anthrophony Insect-Animals which are very important in our environment.
These flying insects are stakeholders in pollination and honey production in the case of honey bees they are related to wasps and ants.
Bees are worldwide distributed in any biomes, where plants, pollinated by insects, are present, but bees are excluded from Antarctica.
Those tiny but very diligent insects, which are bees, seem to play a very important role in our surroundings.
These insects belong to the order Hymenoptera, other insects under this order include sawflies, ants, and wasps.
This is because bees are sociable insects and hence live in colonies with complicated social structures. Every beehive seems to have the queen bee, the worker bee, and the male bees known as the drones.
It is estimated that 20,000 ten different species of bees ranging from honey bees, bumble bees, and other social insects.
But all these species no matter how different from each other and how different their behaviors, all play an important role in the balance of our environments.
The Bee’s Diet
Bees being mostly vegetarians feed on the pollen and the nectar found in flowers. Bees are driven by nectar, a sweet substance that plants produce.
On the other hand, pollen is a very good source of protein which the larvae of bees need to enable them to grow and mature.
Pollination occurs when bees carrying pollens transfer pollen grains from one plant part, more often a flower, to another in the course of searching for nectar and pollens.
Most of the flowering plants particularly those bearing fruits and vegetables require pollination to reproduce.
If there were no bees, we would probably see a big gap in the supply of foods that we consume daily.
Why Bees Do the Waggle Dance?
One of the most fascinating aspects of the behaviors of these insects is that they are extremely good at passing on elaborate information in a dance form.
The waggle dance is a differential type of dance that only honeybees perform to make their other colonies understand that there is enough food in a nearby area.
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This dance employs body postures and movements to signal information on the place and the distance to the food source.
Decoding the Dance
The waggle dance consists of three main components:
A waggle run is a running movement made by a bee through a straight path and this bee vibrates its abdomen.
The orientation of the run concerning the height axis of the hive leads to the direction of the food source.
The Length of the Waggle Run: The waggle run takes the following time. The amount of time depends on the distance one has to travel from the hive to the source of foodstuffs.
The Vigor of the Waggle: The intensity of the waggle determines the quality and, more importantly, the quantity of the food source available.
In this manner, a scout bee is in a position to communicate with other bees in the hive on the availability of a rich productive food source.
They use this knowledge to make their foraging trips to locate and pick up nectar and pollen to feed their colony.
What Other Dances Do Bees Perform?
While only honey bees reap the benefit of the waggle dance, honey bees also do two other dances to keep the hive informed.
The first kind of dance is called the round and it helps the group notice the availability of food.
The second one is the ‘tremble’ dance which alerts other bees that assistance is required to gather the huge amount of nectar that the foraging bees are bringing to the hive.
Colony Organization
In colonies of thousands of droned bees, there can be from 200,000 to 800,000 worker bees, and honey bees.
Every colony has one queen, and all are obedient to her and always defend her. Of all the females in the colony, it is simply because the queen is the only reproductively active female whose major job is to lay eggs and maintain the chemical environment that holds the colony together.
Two other bee Types in the colony are the workers and the drones. Males among bees called drones are born with only one purpose – to mate with a queen.
They fly to drone congregation sites to vie for a shot to mate with a queen rather than having to mate with their own.
If they are so lucky, they die shortly after copulation. If they fail to be selected for mating then they can take some time in the home colony.
However, the females will expel most or all the present supplies whenever they are few, especially during the winter season.
Even though drones are relatively short-lived and seem to contribute little more than to mate, a bee colony would collapse if it lacked healthy drones.
The third type of bee is termed the worker bee. These are the women who do all the important work towards running the colony.
They form beeswax, and cocoons, forage, feed, maintain eggs and larvae, and do other chores as well. These types of bees are the ones that dance to allow other workers to get guided to the source of nectar.
Bee Intelligence
In the case of bees, as our understanding advances, we see that these insects are very smart. The bees can solve problems, count, and direct others to food sources apart from foraging.
Probably they will even use the magnetic fields around the Earth to set their course just like we have seen they use the sun.
The Significance of Bee Conservation
Not only is the availability of food we eat at risk due to dwindling bee populations exacerbated by factors such as habitat destruction, pesticide exposure, and climate change.
As long as the bees can fly and search for flowers, crop pollination can go on and for the so-called ‘beneficial insects’ and other species to exist, bees and their homes need to be shielded.
And we can do this by reducing the number of pesticides, planting flowers that attract bees, supporting local beekeepers, etc.
The complexity of bee’s brains can be described by utilizing the waggle dance. Due to this elaborate communication network, the colony can thrive because essential information on food locations can easily be shared amongst members of the colony.
However, several factors have led to the bee’s decline and these are; habitat destruction, the use of pesticides among others, and most recently climate change.
We now know that bees’ preservation is necessary for food stability and the world’s health.
That is why if we want to understand the role bees perform in our ecosystems, we have to enjoy the waggle dance and its details at least.
As much as we seek to study and understand these, everyone should strive to protect these amazing animals and their environments.