THE LANGUAGE OF BEES

Nearly all animals communicate in some form, but few are as interesting or entertaining as the master communicators of the insect world.

Assisted by a parade of graduate students, biology professor Nieh has been watching, listening to, and recording the sounds, actions, and antics of bees for many years. Bees are highly social animals, dependent on each other, using scent, vibration, movement, and sound to share information. In their organized colonies, the bees’ lifestyle requires a hierarchy of roles, with clearly defined tasks and responsibilities for all the colony members. Communication and cooperation mean that a bee colony not only survives but thrives, Neih says. With 20,000 different species, bees provide many opportunities for study, and he finds them a rich source of information, with a “language” full of nuance, using both signals and cues. Signals are developed specifically to carry information, and cues provide more subtle information, perhaps unintentionally. For example, a bee walking on a flower while she gathers pollen leaves a scent that other bees can smell, providing a cue to other members of the colony that a sorority sister has been there. But the most visible form of bee communication comes in the signal known as the “waggle dance,” a series of spins, twirls, flips, and other maneuvers that alert hive members that a food source is available nearby, with general directions and details about the quality of the food. Other worker bees follow the leader, find the food, and then return to the colony, spreading the word with more dancing, leading more workers to the source. Signals can also be used to inhibit, warn, or rally defenders against threats, and a process called “shimmering,” in which bees group together to flip their abdomens in rapid synchrony, producing waves that ripple and shimmer—like a stadium full of fans doing the wave—that can startle predators into fleeing. The book includes color photographs and a QR code that takes readers to videos on YouTube.

A thoroughly researched, well-documented, and highly readable compilation of decades of scholarship on bee conversation.