Honeybees performing their famous waggle dance become sloppier when too few nestmates are watching. Not because they are making less effort, but because they go in search of an audience whilst dancing. This is the finding of experiments in which researchers manipulated the number of followers around dancing bees (PNAS, 23 March).
The waggle dance is a communication signal by which bees convey the direction and distance of food: the angle of the dance indicates the direction relative to the sun, and the duration of the movement indicates the distance. By removing honeybees (Apis mellifera) from the ‘dance floor’ or replacing them with young bees that do not yet follow, the researchers were able to decouple the number of actual followers from the general activity level inside the hive.
With few followers, the dance became less precise: the spread in dance angle increased significantly and the duration of the straight waggle runs also became less consistent. According to the researchers, this imprecision arises because bees with little audience walk around more and interrupt their dance more frequently to find new followers. The waggle dance thus proves to be a form of communication that is continuously adjusted by social feedback.
