Dancing bees and the language controversy

Abstract

For 30 years a controversy has raged over whether the honey bee waggle dance communicates the distance, direction, and scent of a food source to other bees, or whether it communicates only the scent. One way or the other the dance functions to recruit other bees to the food source visited by the dancing bee. Both sides of the debate have disputed the interpretation of results presented to date, but more data, rather than more arguing, are required to resolve the controversy. Two experiments are presented that test predictions of the two leading recruitment hypotheses: Karl von Frisch's dance language hypothesis, which suggests the dance is a symbolic language conveying directions to a food source, and Adrian Wenner's odor search hypothesis, which suggests the dance conveys no information other than the scent of a food source. The results indicate that recruits are indeed learning the direction of a food source when they follow dances, as von Frisch asserted 50 years ago.