十万个为什么·科学启蒙30篇（1）

7 / 30

蜜蜂的‘舞蹈’有什么含义？

Honey bees perform a special ‘waggle dance’ on the vertical surface of their hive’s honeycomb to share information about food sources.
The angle of the dance relative to gravity tells other bees the direction of flowers compared to the Sun’s position.
The duration of the waggling part indicates how far away the food is—the longer the waggle, the farther the distance.
Bees use polarized light patterns in the sky to navigate even when the Sun isn’t visible behind clouds.
A forager bee may repeat her dance dozens of times, allowing up to 20 nestmates to follow and learn the route.
Dances for water or new nest sites follow similar rules but include extra signals like scent or buzzing intensity.
If a food patch dries up, returning bees stop dancing, and the colony quickly shifts focus elsewhere.
Scientists first decoded this language in the 1940s, and Karl von Frisch later won a Nobel Prize for his discovery.
Bee dances only work because recruits can detect subtle vibrations and chemical cues left on the comb.
Modern research shows that stressed or pesticide-exposed bees make less precise dances, harming colony efficiency.