{"id":4669,"date":"2023-05-19T20:27:21","date_gmt":"2023-05-19T19:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.florisbooks.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4669"},"modified":"2023-05-19T20:33:59","modified_gmt":"2023-05-19T19:33:59","slug":"__trashed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.florisbooks.co.uk\/blog\/2023\/05\/19\/__trashed\/","title":{"rendered":"The Secrets of Bees: An Insider’s Guide to the Life of Honeybees"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Uncover the incredible hidden world of these remarkable — and vital — insects. The Secrets of Bees: An Insider’s Guide to the Life of Honeybees<\/a><\/em> is a fascinating look at the secret life of bees, from buzzing around the garden to the sticky knife in the honey jar. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this extract from the book, we learn about bee dances, which the bees use to share information about the location of foraging sites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The house bees are busy everywhere\u2026but some of them are\nnoticeable for their special behaviour. They move round the comb in a pattern\nthat always returns to the same point. They waggle their abdomens rapidly from\nside to side as they move in a short straight line then return to the starting\npoint in a semicircle only to repeat the \u2018waggle\u2019 dance along the straight\nline, this time completing the other half of the circle on the return, and so\non. There are a number of bees showing this behaviour, especially in the lower\npart of the comb. Many are carrying pollen baskets. Some are walking vertically\ndownwards on the comb, others upwards, many horizontally to the left or right,\nand some diagonally upwards or downwards. But all of them keep to their own\ndirection and exhibit this waggling movement of the abdomen as they walk along\nthe straight line. Some trace out the pattern of movements more vigorously and\nmore frequently, others more deliberately and less frequently. The \u2018dancers\u2019\noften repeat their figure of eight for several minutes without a break.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Quite a lot of bees on the comb are paying attention to\nthem, touching them with their antennae, following them briefly and then going\naway again. This behaviour is reminiscent of that experienced on a hanging\nswarm until it eventually flies to a new site or a new hive, and we observed it\nwith our own swarm before it was hived. Bee scientists call this behaviour in\nthe hive \u2018neural communication\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Karl von Frisch (1895\u20131981) studied these phenomena in a\nlong series of experiments over several decades. He discovered that bee dances\nare connected with a particular foraging site found by a bee on one of her\nflights, and he observed that after she has returned to the hive more bees from\nthe hive soon seek out the same site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Frisch did experiments with dishes of syrup placed at\nvarious distances and in different directions from his observation hives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He marked the returning bees with coloured identification\ndots so that he could observe their behaviour in detail on their return to the\nhive. He discovered that on their return to the hive the bees that had found a\nsource of forage stimulated other bees to fly to the same source with the dance\ndescribed, and he succeeded in decoding the dance pattern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are two distinct components to the dance. One is the\ndirection of the straight line on the comb. The other is the frequency and\nintensity with which this distance is traversed during the waggle dance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because their eyes can detect polarised or orientated light,\nbees are able to sense in flight the direction of sunlight. They can do this\neven when they cannot actually see the sun itself, just as long as there is\nsufficient daylight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As they walk on the comb in the darkness of the hive, the\nbees sense the direction of gravity. If the dancer moves vertically downwards\nin the gravitational field, the dance stimulates the attendant bees to fly away\nfrom the sun when outside, into the darkness so to speak. If the dancer moves\nupwards against gravity, it stimulates the bees to fly towards the sun. Upwards\nto the right and downwards to the left mean fly to the right in relation to the\nsun, either in the direction of the light or away from it. In this way every\nangle of flying direction in relation to the light source can be danced on the\ncomb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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http:\/\/bit.ly\/2Tvt9HO<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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http:\/\/bit.ly\/2J1U4pR<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Uncover the incredible hidden world of these remarkable — and vital — insects. The Secrets of Bees: An Insider’s Guide to the Life of Honeybees is a fascinating look at the secret life of bees, from buzzing around the garden to the sticky knife in the honey jar. In this extract from the book, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4686,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,440],"tags":[993,992,80,150,991,990,717,989,1314],"class_list":["post-4669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biodynamics","category-non-fiction","tag-beekeeper","tag-bees","tag-biodynamics-2","tag-floris-books","tag-honeybees","tag-michael-weiler","tag-organics","tag-secrets-of-bees","tag-world-bee-day","odd"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Secrets of Bees: An Insider's Guide to the Life of Honeybees - Floris Books Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A fascinating look at the secret life of bees.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.florisbooks.co.uk\/blog\/2023\/05\/19\/__trashed\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Secrets of Bees: An Insider's Guide to the Life of Honeybees - 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