How do other bees pick up the dancer's message inside the dark hive?

By feeling her vibrations with their antennae

Which sentence is best supported by the passage?

Bees use the sun as a reference point in their dance

Bees follow other bees by sight only

Bees do not need to communicate

The Bees That Dance · Comprehend2XL

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.

Understanding “The Bees That Dance”

This passage explains the honeybee "waggle dance," a special wiggling pattern a worker bee performs on the honeycomb to tell other bees where to find flowers full of nectar. It describes how the direction and length of her dance share the way and distance to the food, and how the Austrian scientist Karl von Frisch first explained the dance and won the Nobel Prize in 1973.

Why this matters

Learning how bees share directions shows that even tiny creatures can communicate in clever, exact ways, and it helps us notice and respect the busy animal world right in our own gardens.

Key takeaways

When a worker bee finds flowers full of nectar, she returns to the hive and does a waggle dance on the honeycomb to share where the food is.
The direction of the dance points the way relative to the sun, and the length of the wiggle shows how far away the flowers are.
Because the hive is dark, other bees feel the dancer's vibrations and movements with their antennae instead of watching her.
Scientist Karl von Frisch first explained the waggle dance after years of patient study and won the Nobel Prize in 1973.

Vocabulary

nectar: The sweet liquid inside flowers that bees collect to make food.
waggle dance: The special wiggling and turning pattern a bee does to tell other bees where flowers are.
communication: The way living things share information or messages with each other.
antennae: The two thin feelers on a bee's head that it uses to sense movements and vibrations.
vibrations: Tiny fast shaking movements that other bees can feel in the dark hive.

Questions to think about

Open-ended prompts — no single right answer. Great for discussion or journaling.

Why do you think the other bees trust the dancing bee enough to fly off to a place they have never seen before?
Other scientists did not believe Karl von Frisch at first. Why might it be hard for people to believe something surprising, even when it is true?
Bees "talk" by dancing instead of using words. What are some ways animals or people share messages without speaking?

Comprehension skills practiced

finding the main ideacause and effectvocabulary in contextmaking inferences