Round dance (honey bee)

A round dance is the communicative behaviour of a foraging honey bee (Apis mellifera), in which it moves on the comb in close circles, alternating right and then left.

[2] Elements of the round dance also provide information regarding the forager's subjective evaluation of the food source's profitability.

[4] The follower bees extract information about the direction of the food source from the acoustic field that the forager produces.

[1] Honey bees use both the position of the sun and the polarization patterns of a blue sky to communicate the direction to the food source.

Support for this theory rests in the observation that honey bees can still recognize the sun's position when it is obscured by a cloud or a mountain, for example.

[3] Karl von Frisch originally suggested a relationship between what he termed the "liveliness" of the round dance and the value of the food source.

[5] Research indicates that the rate of reversals in the round dance is the measure of profitability that is most highly correlated to food source quality.

There is a positive correlation between energetic value and mean carrier frequency, pulse repetition rate, amplitude, and duration of the sound bursts.

[3] Thus, the forager bee integrates the costs and benefits associated with each potential food source and communicates their subjective profitability through their round dance performance.