Our friend John came to visit us this weekend and he was really drawn to our bees. He recently wrote a paper for college about bee language and figures that humans could learn more about communicating with each other by understanding bee language. That's really something to think about. The honey bees in a colony have multiple ways to communicate with each other. One way they communicate is by "dancing." The waggle dance, the tremble dance and the grooming dance are three dances that have been identified by scientists. The waggle dance is used to communicate information regarding food and water sources among other things.The tremble dance is used when foraging bees need more help at the hive to unload the nectar they have collected. The grooming dance is what is sounds like. It encourages bees to clean each other.
Here is an informative and entertaining video about the waggle dance from NOVA on PBS:
http://video.pbs.org/video/2300846183/ Maybe if we humans communicated more by dancing we would be happier!
I have seen some of our bees doing the waggle dance when we have been checking the hives. Hopefully one of these days I can get a video. In the meantime, enjoy this waggle dance song from Phineas and Ferb:
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