Tail Waggle Dancers

 

Honeybee hovering over sumac flowers, its pollen baskets brimming

After a successful foraging trip a honeybee wants to tell the other members of its hive about the bonanza's location. It shares this information so that other workers can go there directly to benefit their joint larder. It's entirely an all-for-one, one-for-all communal relationship.

You may wonder what language it uses to communicate, within the darkness of the hive and without apparent vocalizations.

The tail waggle dancer
informing two other workers

When a field worker discovers a notable source of pollen and nectar it reports to fellow workers by maneuvers on a vertical surface of honeycomb. It crawls in a pattern of loops alternately clockwise and counterclockwise. The angle between vertical and the central axis of those loops describes the angle between the sun and the flight path to the premium flowers.

There are very likely intricacies related to the bee's ability to perceive polarized sunlight, which we can't see, that provide it additional navigational guidance in making foraging trips sometimes over several miles from the hive to very specific sources of food.

By the duration of the tail waggle loops the bee is able to relate precisely how far its co-workers will have to fly in the given direction.

Honeybee at honeysuckle blossom

Besides the division of labor within the hive these selfless, coordinated foraging abilities are what distinguishes social bees from the majority of species with solitary lifestyles. Drop by drop they can build large stocks of honey that enable the colony to overwinter collectively rather than simply as eggs surviving to another season after the parents' demise in cold weather.