New research has revealed that bees make about 1500 movements to communicate the position of flowers and their distance to their peers.
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himLa bee dance it is mysterious and still little known. While much is known about the movements that bees make to communicate with their peers, a new study by entomologists at the University of Minnesota has revealed more. 1.500, useful to indicate to their sisters the presence and position of their favorite flowers.
The team of scientists has decoded the meaning of more than 1.500 of these passages by offering important information on the protection of this species, which is seriously endangered by climate change and pesticides.
"The thing I find most interesting about bees is their communication," said Morgan Carr-Markell, a doctoral student at the University of Minnesota and lead author of the study published in the journal PLOS One.
Before European colonization, the Midwestern state was covered by grasslands, of which only 2% remains today. Many groups involved in the protection and conservation of species are trying to revive the grasslands and recreate the conditions suitable for the survival of bees and other pollinating insects.
So Carr-Markell and colleagues tried to answer two main questions: When do they engage most in the foraging business? And what types of flowers do bees look for for pollen and nectar, their two main food sources?
To find out, the researchers placed colonies of bees (Apis mellifera) in glass-walled observation hives at two sites: Carleton College's Belwin Conservancy and Cowling Arboretum in Minnesota.
Between 2015-2017, the team recorded the dances of female bees in the hives, right inside the hive entrance.
The dance is explained in the video below, created by one of the studio co-authors Margaret Couvillon.
You can see a movement made up of 8 gestures, in which thebee dancer it moves back and forth to define the direction of a patch of flowers with respect to the Sun on the horizon, creating an angle with its body. Meanwhile, it reports the distance to the nearest pollen source in terms of seconds. Every second it moves in a straight line equals approximately 750 meters.
The number of repetitions of the dance appears to be related to how profitable the food source is, as well as the speed with which it turns to repeat the "figure eight". By decoding and mapping the flowers reported by the bees in 1.528 dances, Carr-Markell and his team thus understood that
"Honey bees were more likely to communicate with their sisters about nectar sources in the grasslands later in the foraging season," in August and September.
This may be because the colonies are looking to stock up on extra supplies for the winter. In addition, they discovered which pollen sources most loved by bees in the prairie, namely goldenrod and clovers.
Research comes at a difficult time for these insects that are facing various threats from mysterious pathogens, parasites, pesticides as well as climate change that is affecting ecosystems around the world.
We hope this new discovery will help them.
Sources of reference: PlosOne, Phys.org, Afp
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The bee dance: a wonderful way to communicate
Hives as you've never seen them: what happens when bees give vent to their creativity
