Bees in a colony work with each other to gather food, and they try to find the mostnectar(花蜜)in the least amount of time possible. A small number of bees work as searchers, but when a good flowerpatch(花丛) is found, how do they tell other bees where to find it?
Bees communicate flower location using special dances inside the hive, where bees live. One bee dances while the other bees watch. The dancing bee smells like the flower patch, and also gives the watching bees a taste of the nectar she has gathered. Smell and taste helps other bees find the correct flower patch. Bees use two different kinds of dances to communicate information: thewaggle(摇摆) dance and the circle dance.
Waggle dance
The waggle dance tells the watching bees two things about a flower patch's location: the distance and the direction away from the hive.
A. Distance
The dancing bee waggles back and forth as she moves forward in a straight line, then circlesaround to repeat the dance. The length of the middle line, called the waggle run, shows roughly how far it is to the flower patch.
B. Direction
Bees know which way is up and which way is down inside their hive, and they use this to show direction. How? Bees dance with the waggle run at a specific angle away from straight up. Outside the hive, bees look at the position of the sun, and fly at the same angle away from the sun.
Circle dance
The circle dance tells the watching bees only one thing about the flower patch's location: that it is somewhere close to the hive.
In this dance, the bee walks in a circle, turns around, then walks the same circle in the opposite direction. Sometimes, the bee includes a little waggle as she's turning around. The duration of this waggle is thought to indicate the quality of the flower patch.
