Discoveries

April 14, 2023

Let’s Do the Waggle

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Honeybees need to perform a specific dance to let their hive know the location of nearby nectar and pollen.

Known as the “waggle dance,” the speedy choreography of twists and turns tells others a lot about the targeted flower, including its distance and deliciousness.

But this intricate dance routine is not genetically hard-wired into the insects – in fact it is a learned skill, the Washington Post reported.

Bees and other insects are capable of imitating one another, a trait known as “social learning” usually observed with bigger-brained creatures, such as monkeys.

In a new study, a research team determined that younger pollinators need to watch and learn from their elders to properly boogie.

The researchers recorded and analyzed the footage of European honey bees in 10 colonies in a lab: In half the hives, younger bees would carefully observe older ones doing the waggle at breakneck speeds.

The other half, however, was deprived of experienced dance partners.

The findings showed that 10-day-old bees that had no partners performed a more inconsistent waggle dance than their partnered-up counterparts. While they eventually did become better at delivering coordinates, the fuzzy arthropods could never quite get right the dance moves for communicating distance.

Researcher Lars Chittka, who was not involved in the paper, noted that the study “opens up a wholly new perspective” about the complexity and sophistication of the waggle dance.

Still, the authors cautioned that pesticides are threatening the dance party because they impact the bees’ ability to learn.

This story originally appeared in the April 14, 2023 newsletter, On the Precipice.