Life in a Hive
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Bee Dance Video Textual Description
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Bee Dance
Since honeybees can't talk, they perform special dances as a means of communication. They use dances to relay different messages, from the need to swarm, to the direction of and distance to a source of food.
Field bees use the "waggle dance" in particular. When they find a great source of nectar, they perform the dance back at the hive to tell other bees where to find the flowers. The dance shows the direction of the flowers relative to the sun, and the bees automatically adjust the dance according to the changing position of the sun in the sky. The speed of the dance indicates how far the nectar is from the hive.
