- Basic Characteristics
- Waggle dance is a figure-eight pattern of honey bee communication
- Each dance consists of waggle phase followed by return phase
- Bees produce tricosane, pentacosane, and other chemicals during dance
- Communication Process
- Waggle runs indicate direction and distance to resources
- Bees adjust dance angles to match changing sun direction
- Multiple bees compete to lead others through dance
- Dance language provides information about resource quality
- Evolution and Adaptation
- Dance evolved from simple foraging behavior
- Different bee species have distinct dance dialects
- Cavity-nesting bees use gravity and sound for orientation
- Dance becomes more important in tropical environments
- Research Applications
- Used in swarm intelligence and routing algorithms
- Inspired Zigbee RF protocol
- Bees can forage independently without following dance
- Dance information used about 10% of the time