PMC

The former corresponds to wagging on the spot, the latter reflects the forward motion through one waggle movement.

Blue bars - waggle duration of Acc in the Acc pure colony; purple bars - waggle duration of Acc in the mixed-species colony; yellow bars - waggle duration of Aml in the mixed-species colony; and green bars - waggle duration of Aml in the Aml pure colony. N in each bar denotes number of individual. *** denotes statistically significant difference at p<0.001, ** denotes p<0.01, * denotes p<0.05 and ο denotes p>0.05. Acc waggle durations in the mixed hive are significantly higher than those of Aml for all feeder positions. Dances in the mixed hive are not significantly different from dances in the single-species hives for either species.

Waggle dance of the honey bee. In this figure, the waggle phase is oriented 45° to the left of “up” in the hive, communicating that a resource is located 45° to the left of the sun’s azimuth. Upon completing this waggle phase, the dancer bee will return to its origin via a return phase, and perform another waggle phase that may indicate a different direction.

Dancing and sleeping bees. (A) A dance consists of waggle phases which code information about a location (e.g., a food source). Pictured are two waggle phases, shown as sequences of jagged lines, connected by a long, curved path. The angle of a waggle phase relative to the vertical is the dance angle, and corresponds to the flight angle to a food source relative to the sun’s azimuth. Here, 1 and 2 represent two consecutive dance angles. The duration of a waggle phase corresponds to the distance to a food source, and is the time taken for a dancer’s head to traverse the distance of the waggle (red dots mark the extent of a waggle phase). SD of dance angles and CV of durations of waggle phases per dance were our precision measures of direction and distance information signaled by dancers. (B) A tagged and marked sleeping bee. (C) Bee sleeping inside a cell. Sleeping bees can be identified by their dorsoventral discontinuous ventilatory motions, represented by arrows. The images of sleeping bees have been modified to highlight sleeping individuals and display metal tag (orange circle on thorax) and paint markings (blue and yellow on abdomen).