Abstract
Because the waggle dances of honeybees contain celestial components, modifications of the dances occur with changing celestial moves relative to a honeybee nest. Since the direction of a particular resource is static, the dances must alter to compensate for the sun's passage. The position of the sun is seasonal between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn so that turns at the end of waggle runs will vary with season and latitude. The bees are confronted with a new difficulty when the sun closely approaches its zenith because only slight errors in the bees' estimation of the relative positions of the sun and zenith generate very large errors. So, the sun compass loses its usefulness when at its zenith. We review experiments and observations on both foraging and absconding in relation to the azimuth. The honeybees' solution for the paradox of the azimuth includes an azimuthal lull, preferences, and time windows.
Highlights
Navigation in honeybees is a reference system in which vector information is derived from path integration encountered en route to a specific goal [1]
The cavity nesting bees and giant honeybees perform waggle dances only in the vertical mode so that the direction and distance of a target resource are in relation to the position of the sun as a vector relative to gravity
Whatever level of behavioural sophistication the waggle dances may represent, direct measurements show that the system is not without the noise of statistical scatter and is ameliorated by olfactory and visual cues [4]
Summary
Navigation in honeybees is a reference system in which vector information is derived from path integration encountered en route to a specific goal [1]. The cavity nesting bees and giant honeybees perform waggle dances only in the vertical mode so that the direction and distance of a target resource are in relation to the position of the sun as a vector relative to gravity. The worker bees recruited only by the information from dances are not able to find a highly localized and unscented food sources on their own To pinpoint those food sources, the experienced foragers provide additional cues to new recruits by circling the food source and scenting it. If the path of the sun lies to the south, the alteration of the direction component of the dance should be anticlockwise, but clockwise to the north. When the sun closely approaches its zenith at noon the bees are confronted with a new difficulty because only slight errors in the bee’s estimation of the relative positions of the sun and zenith generate a very large error estimation of the sun’s azimuth
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