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Dancing and trembling (BfD Journal #31) |
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When a worker bee finds a source of nectar she informs other bees about it when she returns to the nest They visit the nectar source and in turn inform others when they return to the nest In this way forager bees are recruited to make efficient use of available nectar supplies. It was Karl von Frisch and his colleagues who, over many years, worked out how the information is communicated by means of the waggle dance. As more bees visit the nectar source and return to the nest, so more bees will be recruited to visit the source. But what will happen if so many bees are leaving the nest for the nectar that there are insufficient left behind to deal with all the nectar being brought in? Wolfgang Kirchner of the University of WUrzburg in Germany believes that another dance, the 'tremble dance' provides a negative feedback. The tremble dance stops workers flying off for more nectar if too much is currently arriving at the nest for the foodstoring workers to cope with. Wolfgang Kirchner studied bees in hives placed 10 m from a feeder with sugar syrup. As the number of bees at the feeder increased, so the proportion of bees performing tremble dances increased.
[Bees for Development Journal #31]
The tremble-dancing bees produced vibrations at frequencies of 45- 350 Hz, lasting for 142 milliseconds, which made the comb vibrate. Kirchner showed that worker bees subjected to these vibrations performed significantly shorter lasting waggle dances, and consequently the number of bees leaving for the feeder decreased. In this way the colony is able to ensure that it functions most efficiently: there is no point in foragers working to bring nectar which cannot be stored. This research relates to the western hive bee, Apis mellifera. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 1993, vol 33, page 169 |
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