Communication in Bees

Bees are very good social creatures they communicate with some different types of activities the do in the colony. 

Bees Dance

Bees communicate with one another in a number of ways such as drumming feet, flapping wings like a ‘dance’ and use of pheromones. The dance performed by the scout bees is one way the bees inform each other of the location of food and how far away it is. There are several types of dances performed by the bees, but the main ones are the round dance and the waggle dance. The round dance is performed by bees that forage less than approximately 100 metres from the hive. Waggle dance is performed to locate food source beyond 100 metres from the hive. The scout bees also perform a characteristic dance to locate the new found home to which bees intend to swarm.

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The Bees "Pheromone"

The queen releases a substance called a “pheromone” (sometimes called queen substance) which serves different functions. The pheromone enables her to identify members of the colony, to inhibit ovary development in worker bees, to prevent the workers from building queen cells, to help a swarm or colony to move as a cohesive unit, and to attract drones during mating flights. The absence of the queen substance (e.g. when the queen dies) produces opposite responses, i.e. worker bees begin to develop ovaries and to build queen cells, and a swarm searching for accommodation will not cluster but will divide into smaller groups that cannot support the normal life of a bee colony.

Leader of the Colony

Colony decisions are taken by the collective behaviour of bees within one colony sharing the same odour, allowing guard bees to detect intruders.

Understanding the Behaviour

Every Bee Keepers should know about the behaviour of the bees how they communicate with each others. Then they do the better to help the bees what they want to and required.