How Do Bees Communicate?

About 9% of the currently documented 20,000 species of bees are eusocial. They live in complex social groups that depend on intraspecific communication to survive. These social species of bees primarily use movement, vibrational-acoustic signaling, and pheromones to communicate with each other. These signals communicate the location of food, alert the colony to threats, convey health and reproductive information, identify each other, and more.

This guide will explore how bees communicate and examples from various social species. Read on to learn more!

How Do Bees Communicate: Movement

One of the most famous methods of bee communication is the use of complex patterned movement by honey bees. All eight species of honey bees (Apis spp.) perform unique variations of the “waggle dance.” This dance is a movement-based form of communication that provides a hive with information on a food source. Two vital pieces of information are provided through the various aspects of the bee’s dance: the direction of the pollen, nectar, or water source and the distance away from the hive.

Decoding The Waggle Dance

This dance communication is often done inside a hive almost entirely void of light. So, while researchers have decoded this amazing form of communication by observing the dance, the bees in the hive perceive the dance by contacting the dancer with their antennae, participating in the dance after learning the exact pattern, feeling the vibrations of the dancer, and using their sense of taste and smell. This dance has two phases: the waggle run and the return run. During the waggle run, the bee rapidly shakes her abdomen about 13-15 times per second and moves in a straight line. Each second she spends moving in the waggle run equals a half-mile distance from the hive. So, if the waggle runs for half a second, the food source is roughly half a mile from the hive.

At the end of the waggle run, she will turn to the right and revisit the start of the waggle run. After performing another waggle run, she will circle to the left and return to the beginning, creating a figure eight as she dances.

The angle at which she performs this figure eight dance about a vertical orientation inside the hive translates to the angle between the sun’s position in the sky and the direction of the food source. Additionally, before or after this dance, she will often regurgitate nectar to help the hive identify the type of food source. The bee also carries the scent of the food source. This further aids in identifying the resource, such as the type of flower the nectar comes from.

How Do Bees Communicate: Chemical Signaling

Social bees use chemical signaling to interact with and recognize each other, locate threats, and provide crucial information to the rest of the colony. Guards will sniff each individual when bees enter a hive to ensure no threats go unnoticed. If a threat is detected, alarm pheromones are released to recruit bees to defend the colony immediately. Worker bees release the Nasonov pheromone to help return foraging bees orient back to the colony.

A queen honey bee releases the queen mandibular pheromone (QMP). This pheromone sends out information on her health and reproductive status. Depending on the information workers receive through the QMP, this pheromone may suppress egg-laying, initiate swarming, summon worker bees, or attract drones from other hives for mating.

How Do Bees Communicate: Acoustic-Vibrational Signaling

Bees can’t “hear” like animals with ears. However, they process the vibrations sound produces through the ground and air. Their antennas and body hair are quite sensitive to processing vibrations. One study published in 2005 documented 32 vibratory and airborne sound signals produced by bees for intraspecific communication. Most sounds exist at low frequencies, ranging between 300-600 Hertz.

For instance, by beating their wings 200 times per second, bees produce buzzing sounds that other bees perceive as vibrations. Depending on the intensity and volume of the buzzing, these vibrations can signal excitement, threat, alarm, and possibly contentment.

In the swarming season, queen bees, especially when more than one exists in a hive, will often make what’s known as piping sounds. Piping, which the queen produces through thoracic vibrations, is further categorized as either tooting or quacking. Queens newly emerged from their cells will toot by making repeated, drawn-out trumpet-like noises. Unhatched queens typically respond by producing a rapid succession of short, bark-like sounds called quacking. One theory is that tooting is a declaration of emergence from the queen’s cell and a warning to unhatched queens. Quacking is typically a response to the tooting of the emerged queen and usually results in worker bees clustering around the queen’s cell.

The photo featured at the top of this post is © Frank Wagner/iStock via Getty Images