Sunday, January 26, 2014

Blog 2: Interpreting the Language of Bees

This video is about how a female bee tells the collector bees where the pollen is. She performs a "wiggle dance". This tells the other bees how far away the pollen is. With each shake she tells them how many turn and how far away the site of the pollen is! It is very fascinating.

I learned that bee populations are made up of mostly female bees. I also learned that the Queen bee lays about 2 million eggs in her life time. This isn't connected to language, but it was rather interesting.

I think this is interesting and pertinent to us because most people  probably assume that the bees buzz is actually how they communicate, when in fact it is with their dances!

3 comments:

  1. Wow, I didn't think that bees communicated like that, or at all, actually. It looked like the bees around the one that was 'dancing' were almost trying to feel the vibrations coming from her wings and such. All I saw was a be shaking, and it's crazy how much information is encoded in that dance, ha ha.

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  2. I find this amazing! I did not know that the buzzing noise that bees make was actually them dancing. I wonder how can they tell the distance with buzzing, because all i saw was the bee moving in circles and heard buzzing. I know this is off topic, but it must suck to live only 30 days then die. :(

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  3. I think this is related to language! The bees have their own way of communicating with each other, even if it was dancing! how interesting the way they do things!

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