Genius bees quick to learn 'foreign' language

by Rich Bowden - Aug 6 2009, 07:33

In a remarkable study, Australian scientists have discovered that Asian and European honeybees have the capacity to understand one another, despite having different secret dance languages.

Scientists at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Vision Science and the Australian National University explained how bees tell the hive where a food source is by performing intricate little dances that transmit information.

“Honeybees gauge the distance flown to a food source using a ‘visual odometer’ that logs the objects that flow past their vision as they fly,” said Dr. Shaowu Zhang, a Chief Investigator at ARC Centre of Excellence in Vision Science and Australian National University in a press release.
 
“On their return to the hive they transfer this information to their hive-mates using a tail-waggle dance, where the speed and pattern of the beats indicates the distance and direction of the food,” he added.

However, with different species of honeybee using different forms of dance, Dr. Zhang said researchers wanted to know if the difference was a handicap to the exchange of food knowledge.

“We also wanted to find out whether different species of honeybee can learn from, and communicate with, one another,” Zhang said.

In order to accomplish this, the team bred a mixed hive consisting of an Asian queen bee and Asian and European workers.

According to Dr. Zhang, the scientists “were often able to observe both species of foragers dance in the mixed colony and saw the other species of bees following the dancing bee,” despite the Asiatic and European bees having quite separate and distinct food dances.

“The team found that in the mixed colony Asian bees can be recruited by the European dancer to find the food source that the European bees had visited,” said Dr. Zhang said. “We watched the Asian bees set out for and successfully locate the food.”

“The same applied to the European bees, proving that the two species are able to communicate with one another despite their native ‘language barrier’,” he continued. “We concluded that Asian and European honeybees can learn to understand one another.”

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