Honey bees communicate distance via non-linear waggle duration functions

Abstract

Honey bees (genus Apis) can communicate the approximate location of a resource to their nestmates via the waggle dance. The distance to a goal is encoded by the duration of the waggle phase of the dance, but the precise shape of this distance-duration relationship is ambiguous: earlier studies (before the 1990s) proposed that it is non-linear, with the increase in waggle duration flattening with distance, while more recent studies suggested that it follows a simple linear function (i.e. a straight line). Strikingly, authors of earlier studies trained bees to much longer distances than authors of more recent studies, but unfortunately they usually measured the duration of dance circuits (waggle phase plus return phase of the dance), which is only a correlate of the bees’ distance signal. We trained honey bees (A. mellifera carnica) to visit sugar feeders over a relatively long array of distances between 0.1 and 1.7 km from the hive and measured the duration of both the waggle phase and the return phase of their dances from video recordings. The distance-related increase in waggle duration was better described by a non-linear model with a decreasing slope than by a simple linear model. The relationship was equally well captured by a model with two linear segments separated at a “break-point” at 1 km distance. In turn, the relationship between return phase duration and distance was sufficiently well described by a simple linear model. The data suggest that honey bees process flight distance differently before and beyond a certain threshold distance. While the physiological and evolutionary causes of this behavior remain to be explored, our results can be applied to improve the estimation of honey bee foraging distances based on the decoding of waggle dances.

Can honey bees be used to detect rare plants? Taking an eDNA approach to find the last plants in a weed eradication program

“…Despite the logic that a plant being closer to the hive would improve the likelihood of pollen collection and detection, bee foraging ecology suggests otherwise. Several studies have indicated that bees forage at relatively greater distances (Kohl & Rutschmann, 2021; Visscher & Seeley, 1982) and only a small proportion (10%) forage within 500 m of the hive (Beekman & Ratnieks, 2000). Such behaviors may introduce a bias against honey bees visiting spatially rare plant taxa when abundant species are in flower.…”

Tropical and montaneA.ceranashow distinct dance-distance calibration curves

“…For comparison of the dance dialects, we also fit non-linear mixed effects models. We did this since previous work had shown that non-linear curves often fit the waggle dance duration-distance relationship better (George et al, 2021; Kohl and Rutschmann, 2021). We fit a logarithmic curve as described previously (George et al, 2021).…”

Foraging distances, habitat preferences and seasonal colony performance of honeybees in Central European forest landscapes

“…To derive foraging distance from circuit duration, we used our own calibration curve that is based on a feeder training experiment performed in the same forest region and with the same bees as in this study (Arra, Rutschmann, Kohl, unpublished data; Kohl & Rutschmann, 2021). We applied the following two formulas to translate the mean circuit duration t per dance (in seconds) into distance d (in meters):…”