Bees are tiny creatures, smaller than a paperclip, but they have an astonishing way of talking to each other. They dance.
When a worker bee finds a patch of flowers full of sweet nectar, she flies straight back to her hive. She lands on the honeycomb and begins to wiggle and turn in a special pattern. Scientists call this the "waggle dance," and it is one of the most amazing forms of animal communication ever discovered.
The direction the bee dances tells the other bees which way to fly. If she dances straight up the honeycomb, the food is in the same direction as the sun. If she dances at an angle, the food is at that same angle from the sun. The length of her wiggle tells the others how far away the flowers are. A long, slow wiggle means the food is far away, but a short, quick wiggle means the food is very close to the hive.
Other bees watch the dancer carefully, but they cannot really see her well inside the dark hive. Instead, they use their antennae to feel her vibrations and movements. Within just a few minutes, dozens of bees lift off and head straight to the flowers — even though they have never seen the spot before in their lives.
This dance was first explained by an Austrian scientist named Karl von Frisch, who watched bees patiently for many years. At first, other scientists did not believe him. How could such a tiny insect share such precise directions? But careful experiments proved that he was right. In 1973, von Frisch won the Nobel Prize for his important work.
The next time you see a bee buzzing in your garden, remember: she may have just been told exactly where to find your flowers, by another bee, on a tiny stage of wax inside a busy, humming hive.