Abstract
The honeybee (Apis mellifera) waggle dance, which is performed inside the hive by forager bees, informs hive mates about a potent food source, and recruits them to its location. It consists of a repeated figure-8 pattern: two oppositely directed turns interspersed by a short straight segment, the “waggle run”. The waggle run consists of a single stride emphasized by lateral waggling motions of the abdomen. Directional information pointing to a food source relative to the sun's azimuth is encoded in the angle between the waggle run line and a reference line, which is generally thought to be established by gravity. Yet, there is tantalizing evidence that the local (ambient) geomagnetic field (LGMF) could play a role. We tested the effect of the LGMF on the recruitment success of forager bees by placing observation hives inside large Helmholtz coils, and then either reducing the LGMF to 2% or shifting its apparent declination. Neither of these treatments reduced the number of nest mates that waggle dancing forager bees recruited to a feeding station located 200 m north of the hive. These results indicate that the LGMF does not act as the reference for the alignment of waggle-dancing bees.
Highlights
The waggle dance of the honeybee, Apis mellifera, is performed by a forager bee inside the hive and informs nest mates about the existence and location of a rich food source [1]
In experiment 1 (East–West alignment of hive) and experiment 2 (North–South alignment of hive), the number of nest mates that forager bees recruited to a feeding station located 200 m north of the hive did not differ between treatment and control sessions [experiment 1: F1,1050.9548, p50.35 (Fig. 2A); experiment 2: F1,750.9660, p50.36 (Fig. 2B)], indicating that the local (ambient) geomagnetic field (LGMF) had no effect on the ability of forager bees to recruit nest mates to a food source
In experiment 3, forager bees recruited similar numbers of nest mates to the feeding station during treatment and control sessions [F1,1450.0274, p50.87 (Fig. 3)], again indicating that the direction of the LGMF field had no effect on the ability of forager bees to recruit nest mates to a food source
Summary
The waggle dance of the honeybee, Apis mellifera, is performed by a forager bee inside the hive and informs nest mates about the existence and location of a rich food source [1]. It is undoubtedly one of the most sophisticated means of information transfer amongst insects and probably the entire animal kingdom. The bee alternately turns left or right and returns to her starting point, describing a figure 8 in the process. She may repeat this procedure many times. The hypothesis that the waggle dancing bee recruits hive mates to a food source has been confirmed by radartracking the flight of bees that attended a waggle dance [5]
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