Scientists have long known the purpose of the distinctive honeybee “waggle dance”: it serves as social communication. Through these intricate movements, bees learn where to find pollen, nectar, or water. But it wasn’t clear whether the dance was an innate behavior or something learned. Now, a team of American and Chinese researchers has found that the waggle dance is genetically inherited, yet bees refine the skill over their lives. Honeybees live about 30 to 40 days. Young bees learn to waggle by watching experienced dancers. The study shows honeybees engage in social learning by observing older hive members, gradually mastering this complex form of communication.
When a honeybee returns to the hive after scouting the area, it begins its “waggle dance.” This not only informs other bees about the location of nectar sources but also allows younger bees to study the useful movements for future replication. The transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next is a hallmark of culture—a behavior seen in humans and other animals. As James Nieh, a professor in the Department of Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution at the University of California, San Diego, stated, animals, like humans, are capable of passing on information crucial for their survival. The new study shows social learning also occurs in insects.
What the researchers discovered was how the skill transfer process occurs. They created five experimental colonies of young honeybees. The scientists observed that bees that had not yet mastered the dance made erratic movements, as reported by the Independent. As these bees aged, their movements became more refined. The learning process began around the eighth day of life, when the bees started to perform their first tentative wiggles. By the twentieth day, they were already adept at waggling, swaying their bodies, and drawing figure eights to convey information about food locations to other members of the community, said Dr. Dong Shihua of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the study’s lead author.
Each movement in the dance conveys specific information, including direction, distance, type, and quality of food. The results of the study were published in the journal Science.
There are about 20,000 species of bees worldwide, residing on every continent except Antarctica. Nectar serves as an energy source for bees, while pollen provides proteins and other essential nutrients.
