Honeybees have been around since ancient times and studies have been made to discover their unique way of communicating.

Studies through the years have revealed that honeybees have developed several cognitive skills and have their own unique way of communicating. You might think that honeybees, once they are back in the hive, are just flying around. Actually the bees are communicating with one another, showing directions and distance of food.

Just like humans, honeybees use their five senses throughout their lives but the manner in which they communicate is fascinating. There are two methods that honeybees employ. One is through the use of pheromones or chemical communication. One is choreographed dance, which in beekeeping parlance is called the waggle dance.

Through pheromones

Chemical scents that animals produce and release are called pheromones that trigger specific behavioral responses from others belonging to the same species. The pheromones that honeybees produce keep the colony together, with the three castes producing different pheromones to trigger different responses.

The queen bee releases a pheromone that stimulates the activities of the worker bees, including foraging, comb building, food storage and rearing the brood. She also releases pheromones to attract male drone bees, her suitors. The queen, using other pheromones, regulate the number of drones in the hive.

The Nassanoff gland located on the tip of the abdomen of worker bees releases a pheromone that is helpful in guiding the foraging bees back to the hive. The worker bees also has a specific pheromone that alarms the colony.

Even the brood secretes a special chemical that allows the worker bees tending to them to recognize the brood’s feeding needs, their stage of development and even their individual gender.

Through dance

The waggle dance of the honeybees is considered as a very fascinating honeybee language. It is performed by the foragers as soon as they return to the hive, bringing water, pollen or nectar. The patterns of movement during the dance are precise, which give out accurate information about the type of food that the foraging bees found and its location.

There are even two kinds of dance that honeybees perform. The round dance gives out the information as to the food source that is available in the area that is within a 30 to 240 feet distance from the hive.

The waggle dance is conducted when the distance of the food source is much farther from the hive. In this communication form, the bee performs a shivering side to side movement of its abdomen at the same time that it is dancing in a figure-eight pattern. The vigorous way the bee moves, the frequency of repeats and the dance’s direction combine to give the other foraging worker bees the accurate information as to the distance, type of food, and the actual source of the food that the worker bee found.

While this behavior has been observed by beekeepers and ethologists for more than a century, it was Nobel laureate and ethologist from Austria, Karl von Frisch, who was one of the first scientists that successfully translated the waggle dance’s meaning.