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Honey bees can perform accurately directed waggle dances based solely on information from a homeward trip

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Abstract

Honey bees were displaced several 100 m from their hive to an unfamiliar site and provisioned with honey. After feeding, almost two-thirds of the bees flew home to their hive within a 50 min observation time. About half of these returning, bees signalled the direction of the release site in waggle dances thus demonstrating that the dance can be guided entirely by information gathered on a single homeward trip. The likely reason for the bees’ enthusiastic dancing on their initial return from this new site was the highly rewarding honeycomb that they were given there. The attractive nature of the site is confirmed by many of these bees revisiting the site and continuing to forage there.

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Acknowledgments

With this study, the author wishes to remember the late Ernst Kramer. His modesty hid his extra-ordinary creativity. His skills enhanced the work of many, not only biologists, like the author. He invented remarkable devices and also communicated generously his often unorthodox ideas to facilitate worldwide research. As a friend he provided many helpful suggestions not only on ‘bees’. The author is also grateful to many people for their assistance in the experiments. Mrs. Regina Fischer-Gerlach, Werner Friedrich, Astrid Heiling, and Jay McCartney among others, helped in the field. Oskar Pöhlmann and family allowed me to work on their grounds. Horst Mittelstaedt and Tom Collett gave valuable comments and helped to polish the English of this paper and Thomas Decker and Marina Sergejeva did patient proof reading. Tom Collett, Friedrich Barth and the two anonymous reviewers maintained that the presented data and interpretations deserve further dissemination; particular thanks to them. Thomas Reichmann prepared the illustrations. Dietrich Mautz and Egbert Roth of the Bayerische Landesanstalt für Bienenzucht, at those days still in Erlangen, supplied bees, while funds and instruments were provided by the University Erlangen-Nürnberg.

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  1. Breslauer Str. 40, 91058, Erlangen, Germany

    Wolfgang Edrich

  2. University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany

    Wolfgang Edrich

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  1. Wolfgang Edrich
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Correspondence to Wolfgang Edrich.

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Edrich, W. Honey bees can perform accurately directed waggle dances based solely on information from a homeward trip. J Comp Physiol A 201, 1003–1010 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-015-1030-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-015-1030-7

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