Can honeybees accurately communicate nectar sources to other bees?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the communication abilities of honeybees, particularly in relation to signaling the presence of nectar sources and explosives. It explores the mechanisms of bee communication, including the waggle dance, and the implications of these behaviors for understanding their navigation and signaling capabilities.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Technical explanation
  • Debate/contested

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants note that honeybees can signal the presence of explosives, but question how they indicate the specific location of these sources relative to the hive.
  • One participant mentions that honeybees can communicate both distance and direction to their hivemates, referencing the relationship between gravity and the position of the Sun as part of their navigation.
  • There is a suggestion that bees may only indicate the presence of explosives within a certain radius of the hive, raising questions about the limitations of their signaling.
  • Another participant wonders about the accuracy of interpreting bee signals, particularly when multiple workers find different nectar sources and how this may complicate the communication of range and direction.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express varying views on the effectiveness and mechanisms of honeybee communication, particularly regarding the specificity of their signals. There is no consensus on how accurately bees can indicate the location of nectar sources or explosives.

Contextual Notes

Participants reference historical studies and existing literature on bee communication, but there are caveats regarding the reliability of sources and the complexity of bee signaling behaviors.

Who May Find This Useful

This discussion may be of interest to those studying entomology, animal behavior, or communication systems in nature, as well as individuals curious about the applications of bee behavior in fields such as environmental monitoring or search and rescue operations.

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..."Honeybees are as good as dogs," Haartmann says. The trick, it turns out, is training the little critters to detect bomb scents. Some bees, exposed to the scents of bomb ingredients and rewarded with sugar water, get it right away. Others wash out, a surprise given that insects are seen as automatons because their behavior is so uniform, Haartmann says.

So far, his team has trained bees to pick up the scent with their antennae and then flick their proboscises - a tubular feeding organ that extends from the mouth - when exposed to TNT, howitzer propellant and liquid-explosives ingredients at a level in the air of a few parts per trillion. Bees are natural-born sniffers, antennae sensing pollen in the wind and tracking it down to the flowers that are a food source for their hives.[continued]
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20061127/tc_usatoday/honeybeesjointhebombsquad
 
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Very fascinating.. The link you posted seems to be expired. Here's another reference.

Now, I understand the part about bees signaling they have found explosives. But how do they get them to show where the explosives are? At best they can only indicate their presence within some radius of the hive. The average http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1046/j.1365-2435.2000.00443.x/abs/ of honey bees is 1 km.

Or maybe they can afix a GPS transmitter or recorder to them.:biggrin:
 
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Hi, Ouabache,

Ouabache said:
Now, I understand the part about bees signaling they have found explosives. But how do they get them to show where the explosives are? At best they can only indicate their presence within some radius of the hive.

Honeybees can communicate both distance and direction to their hivemates. Interestingly, this depends upon an abstract analogy between the preferred direction picked out by gravitation at the surface of the Earth, and the position of the Sun. This has been known since Von Frisch 1947. See (modulo the usual caveats about the instability and lack of quality control at WP) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee_learning_and_communication, or even better, see one of the books on honeybee communication.

However, note that the quoted article shows that the waggle dance is not involved in how these bees have been trained to signal to their human masters the presence of explosives (reread Ivan's quotation above).
 
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Interesting about honey bees, indicating range and direction to other bees. I recall that too, from videos I had seen in grade school. I wonder how well we understand bee's signals. Can we accurately predict their range and direction, from their behavior?

What happens when different workers find several sources of nector? Each may indicate a different range and direction to fly.
 
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