Communication 1

There are electric fields that build up on honey bees as they fly, or rub body parts together that may allow the honey bees to talk to each other. Scientists have long known that flying insects gain an electrical charge when they buzz around. That charge, typically positive, accumulates as the wings zip through the air—much as electrical charge accumulates on a person shuffling across a carpet.

It has been known for some time that bees perform an intricate dance in directing their hive mates to a source of food. Now most bee keepers can show you the most looked at and studied form of communication called the “waggle dance.” When there is a dense patch of flowers or a source of water, they walk across the comb in the hive to show a pattern consistent to the direction of and also the distance to the flowers.

It appears that they also transmit information by means of sound. The first and most obvious guess was that the bee might create the pulses of sound with the waggling of its abdomen.  The other possibilities are that the bees produce sound by vibrating their wings. The function of sound was illuminated by considering the question of whether or not the bee’s judgment of distances is affected by the wind. When a bee flies to a source of food against the wind, the sounds indicating the distance tend to be a little longer than when it does not fly against the wind. .  (Perkins)

Bibliography

Perkins, Sid. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/28/bees-buzz-electric-field-communication_n_2966015.html. March 2013.