Youbee's™ Wiggle Waggle Dance Creates a Buzzy Feeling!

Bees do their famous waggle dance when they want to tell hive mates where to find a good source of food and other resources. But what do they do when they discover that their co-workers may be buzzing off into a trap, such as a spider lurking at the food source?

They break up the waggle dance by butting their heads into the bees dancing, according to research published yesterday in the journal Current Biology. The waggle dancer (at center with yellow and pink paint marks) is frozen when receiving a stop signal from a bee marked “S” to her left.

A biologist at the University of California at San Diego has discovered that honey bees warn their nest mates about dangers they encounter while feeding with a special signal that’s akin to a “stop” sign for bees, the university said in a news statement.

The discovery resulted from a series of experiments on honey bees foraging for food that were attacked by competitors from nearby colonies fighting for food at an experimental feeder, the university explained. “The bees that were attacked then produced a specific signal to stop nest mates who were recruiting others for this dangerous location.”

Honey bees use a waggle dance to communicate the location of food and other resources. Attacked bees directed “stop” signals at nest mates waggle dancing for the dangerous location, scientists say.

James Nieh, an associate professor of biology at UCSD who conducted the experiments, said this peculiar signal in bee communication was known previously by scientists to reduce waggle dancing and recruitment to food, but until now no one had firmly established a “clear natural trigger” for that behavior.

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[Read the full article at http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/news/chiefeditor/2010/02/bees-butt-waggle-dance.html?]