Waggle dance facts for kids
The waggle dance is a special figure-eight dance. Honey bees do this dance inside their hive. It's how a worker bee tells other bees where to find good food. This amazing way of talking was discovered by Karl von Frisch. He was an Austrian scientist who studied animal behavior.
This dance is a type of communication for bees. It helps them share important information. They tell each other the direction and distance to flowers. These flowers might have nectar or pollen, or both. Bees also use the dance to show where water can be found.
The waggle dance helps bees work together. It gets other bees to help collect resources for the hive. People once thought bees had two different dances. These were called "round dances" and "waggle dances." Round dances were for nearby food. Waggle dances were for food farther away. But now we know that a round dance is just a very short waggle dance.
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How Bees Dance: The Waggle Dance Explained
A waggle dance can have many parts, from one to over 100. Each part is called a "circuit." Every circuit has two main steps. These are the waggle phase and the return phase. When a bee finds a great food spot, it comes back to the hive. Then, it starts its special dance.
First, the bee moves in a small, wave-like pattern. This is the "waggle run" or "waggle phase." After this, it turns right. It then circles back to where it started. Next, it does another waggle run. This time, it turns left and circles back to the beginning. The waggle phase is the most important part. It gives the other bees all the key information.
Finding Food: Direction and Distance in the Dance
The way a bee does its waggle run shows two things. It tells other bees the direction and distance to the flowers. If flowers are straight in line with the sun, the bee waggles straight up. It does this on the vertical combs inside the hive.
If the flowers are to the right or left of the sun, the bee changes its angle. It waggles at the same angle to the upward direction. The distance to the flowers is shown by how long the waggle run lasts. The farther away the flowers are, the longer the bee waggles. For every 100 meters the flowers are from the hive, the waggle phase lasts about 75 milliseconds.
Images for kids
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Figure-eight-shaped waggle dance of the honeybee (Apis mellifera). A waggle run oriented 45° to the right of ‘up’ on the vertical comb (A) indicates a food source 45° to the right of the direction of the sun outside the hive (B). The abdomen of the dancer appears blurred because of the rapid motion from side to side.
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Workers of Apis mellifera carnica on honeycomb.
Learn More
- In Spanish: Danza de la abeja para niños
