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THE
·HONEYBEE
· - ~ KNOWS
ALl
THE
ANCLES
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simpie. A ll the bee has todo is navi–
ga te by keeping a fixed angle in re–
la tion to the sun. Even on cloudy
days th ey can do thi s because o f
thcir abi lity to pcrceivc thc a ngula r
direction of the sun 's polarized light.
But there·s more here than meets
the bee's eye. The su n is a moving
point of reference. So the little six–
legged pathfinder has to continually
"compute' ' its moveme nt as it pro–
ceeds in a g iven sun-ori ented direc–
tion.
Bees not only have to work out
the o lutions to such problems. they
have to communicate them to other
The
PLAIN TRUTH May 1978
bees as well. Imagine a scout bee
retu rning to the hive havingjust dis–
covered a distant trove o f ftowery
necta r and pollen. How does she tell
her fellow workcrs where the ft ow–
ers are located? By doing a fancy
dance step in front of her sister
bees! Distance to the find is in–
dica ted by the pattern a nd fre–
quency of the dance. The further
the source, the slower the speed of
the dance.
T he real genius behind the bee's
well-pa tterned footwork comes in
the way she communicates direc–
tional informa tion. Let's say the
,·
scout knows that the desired target
is a t a n angle o f 30 degrees from the
sun. She simply ro tates the axis fo r
he r dance pattern 30 degrees from
the true vertical!
Even more rcmarkable is the fact
tha t. during the dance. the bee will
adjust the angle to compensate for
the sun's movement through the
sky. And this process all takes place
within a darkened beehive!
Now how did the lowly honey–
bee ma ke such a great intellectual
Jeap? Who taught it to mentally
equate deviation from the vertical
(Continued on page 41)
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