Why Do Bees Dance?

Why Do Bees Dance? 

The first time we heard that bees dance to communicate, we thought our beekeepers were kidding. 

Bees dancing?

It sounds like something from a children's book.

But they really do.

And the more we learnt about what happens inside a hive, the more we realised that what looks like a little movement on a honeycomb can actually carry a remarkable amount of information.

A dance with a purpose

When a forager finds a good source of food, she doesn't simply return to the hive and keep it to herself.

She shares the information with all her friends. 

One of the most fascinating ways she does this is through what is known as the waggle dance.

By moving in a particular pattern, the bee can give other bees information about the direction and approximate distance of a food source.

Think about that for a moment.

A bee leaves the hive, finds a flowering tree, and returns with more than nectar.

She brings back directions.

The hive is always exchanging information

We tend to think of bees as individuals flying from flower to flower.

But inside the hive, there is a constant exchange of information.

Where is the food?

Is there enough of it?

What is happening outside?

What does the colony need?

The waggle dance is one part of that much bigger conversation.

And it made us think differently about what we were seeing whenever we opened a hive.

There was much more happening than we could see at first.

We started looking for the dancers

Once you know about the waggle dance, it becomes very tempting to look for it.

We remember opening hives and watching the bees move across the comb, trying to make sense of what we were seeing.

Of course, it isn't quite as simple as spotting a bee dancing and knowing exactly what she is saying.

You need to understand the context, the movement and what the other bees are doing.

But knowing that communication is happening at all changes the way you look at a hive.

What once looked like random movement starts to look much more purposeful.

A different way of thinking about communication

Perhaps what fascinates us most isn't the dance itself.

It is the fact that bees have evolved their own way of sharing information about the world around them.

We communicate with words.

Bees use movement, scent and other signals.

Different creatures have different ways of making sense of the world and telling one another what they have found.

And somehow, it works.

A bee doesn't need to speak our language for the colony to understand her.

The landscape becomes part of the conversation

This is another reason we became so interested in where honey comes from.

Imagine a bee finding a flowering Jarrah tree in Western Australia.

She returns to the hive and communicates where she has been.

Other bees follow.

More bees visit the same flowers.

Nectar comes back to the colony.

And eventually, some of that nectar becomes honey.

The jar on our kitchen table can feel very far removed from that moment.

But it isn't.

The honey carries a little piece of that journey with it.

A small reminder that we're not the only ones paying attention

The more we learn about bees, the more we realise how much is happening around us that we simply don't notice.

A flowering tree is not just a flowering tree.

To us, it might be something beautiful to walk past. To a bee, it can be a source of food, a location to remember and information worth bringing back to the colony.

And then, somehow, that information travels through a dance on a piece of honeycomb.

We find that extraordinary.

Perhaps that's what spending time with bees has given us most: a different way of looking at the world.

To slow down.

To notice the small things.

And to remember that even in a place we think we know well, there may be an entire conversation taking place that we simply haven't learnt how to hear.

Sometimes, you just have to watch a little more closely.