BEES are deliberately vague when giving each other directions to flowers.
Anja Weidenm眉ller of the Theodor Boveri Institute for Life Sciences in
W眉rzburg, Germany, and Thomas Seeley of Cornell University in Ithaca, New
York, analysed the “waggle” dances of bee scouts using slow-motion video. As the
researchers report in a forthcoming issue of Behavioral Ecology and
Sociobiology, scouts made errors of up to 30 degrees when giving directions
to flowers, but never more than 10 degrees when pointing out nest sites. Flowers
usually grow in patches, so foraging bees should spread over a wider area. “It
makes sense to distribute the bees to a patch,” says Weidenm眉ller.
