Feathers of Hope

A Bee's Course

In the 1960s, biologist Karl von Frisch came up with the hypothesis that honeybees communicate the distance and direction to nectar sources via a waggle dance performed in the hive. His theory was largely accepted, but some scientists argued that the bees who had attended the dance picked up the scent of the food source from the dancing bee and made their way to the nectar site by following the scent. Lacking a way to directly follow these bees en route, some controversy remained.

Technology moves along, and we are now able to attach harmonic radar transponders (weighing between 6 and 20 mg) to insects. In a paper just published in Nature, scientists used radar to obtain flight tracks of honeybees as they went out to find the food source after observing the waggle dance, thus directly confirming von Frisch's theory. (Image courtesy of the BBRSC and Rothamsted Research).