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Bees have been important companions of humans since ancient times. Archaeological discoveries of rock paintings show that as early as 8000 years ago, humans took the risk of climbing cliffs to obtain honey. Ancient civilizations also left records of keeping bees and collecting honey, indicating that humans have long observed the social behavior of bees. However, in these early understandings, although people were amazed by the orderly organization of bees, they were not clear about their complex communication methods.

Aristotle mentioned in his book "The History of Animals" that bees had peculiar dance behaviors inside the hive before the 4th century BC, and speculated that bees may have communicated information in some way after collecting honey and returning to the hive. These ancient records provided the initial inspiration and questions for future research on bee behavior. People are beginning to realize that bees may not only have instinctive activities, but they may also have a language to convey experiences.

Source:

1. https://blythewoodbeecompany.com/blogs/news/honey-bees-in-history-a-bee-s-role-in-ancient-civilizations?srsltid=AfmBOoo0YecP_8q5ZgJZohg6I-YYrYlj2x5qYJ-FDUxL3unv3sB03gk3

2. https://www.planetbee.org/post/the-sacred-bee-bees-in-caveman-times

3. https://penelope.uchicago.edu/aristotle/histanimals9.html

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Charles Darwin's theory of evolution in 1859 prompted scientists to re-examine animal behavior, viewing it as a product of adaptation to survival rather than a instinct. At the beginning of the 20th century, animal behavior research was caught in a dilemma: one school of "vitality theory" believed that instinct was a mysterious and unanalyzable nature, while the other school of "reflexivism" and behaviorism mechanically attributed behavior to stimulus reflex or postnatal learning. The breakthrough comes from scholars who focus on the adaptive value of behavior, comparing the behavior of different species and explaining behavioral evolution based on species survival needs. This approach has given rise to a new discipline called "Comparative Behavior" or "Ethology," which emphasizes observing how innate behavioral patterns of animals are formed through natural selection under natural conditions.

In 1973, behavioral pioneers von Frisch, Karl, Konrad Lorenz, and Nikolaas Tinbergen jointly won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and were hailed as the founders of animal behavioral science. Their initial discoveries in insects, fish, and birds confirmed that animal behavior can be revealed by scientific experiments and integrated with evolutionary theory.

Source:

1.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1973/press-release/

2.

https://neilgreenberg.com/deep-ethology/

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In the late 18th century, German pastor Ernst Spitzner observed bees dancing in circles inside a hive. He believed that bees spread the scent of food by running around their companions to wipe away the fragrance of flowers. This is the earliest speculation linking bee dance with information transmission, but he mistakenly believed that the information carrier was scent.

In 1823, German beekeeper Nicholas Unhoch also described the dance behavior of bees. He saw bees happily running back and forth in the hive, but did not find any connection with the honey bees.

In the mid-19th century, some scholars also recorded the phenomenon of worker bees running in circles to attract the attention of other bees, but at that time, most people still tended to believe that bees mainly relied on their sense of smell to find food. Some scholars speculate that bees may use solar position or geographic memory for navigation, but due to a lack of experimental evidence, the true meaning of the bee dance remains a mystery. These early speculations and debates provided historical clues for von Frisch's future experiments, suggesting that bee dance steps may contain more information than scent.

Source:

1.

https://lithub.com/solving-the-mystery-of-the-dancing-honey-bees/

2.

https://theapiarist.org/the-waggle-dance/

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In the 19th century, the sensory abilities of bees sparked scientific interest. British scientist John Lubbock conducted a classic experiment in 1882, in which he linked sugar water rewards with colored cards and found that bees could remember the location of colors and fly multiple times to color cards with rewards. He speculated that bees may perceive light that is invisible to the human eye, and later it was confirmed that bees can perceive ultraviolet light.

These early studies revealed that bees have developed sensory organs that can distinguish environmental information such as color and odor. This laid the foundation of sensory biology for later understanding how bees transmit information through dance, that is, bees have the ability to acquire and process complex environmental signals, rather than just simple reflexes.

Source:

1. https://www.antwiki.org/wiki/images/0/06/Lubbock_1883.pdf

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Charles Henry Turner was an early African American zoologist who conducted a series of clever experiments on bees in the 1900s, demonstrating their intelligence in recognizing colors and shapes. He trained bees to fly into paper rolls of different shapes to feed on, and found that bees can learn to distinguish simple shapes and patterns, demonstrating learning abilities beyond instinct. Turner also discovered that bees can find new routes back to their nests through multiple experiments, demonstrating a certain degree of directional learning ability. These findings did not receive sufficient attention at the time, but they foreshadowed the cognitive processes behind bee behavior

Overall, before von Frisch deciphered the language of dance, the experiments of pioneers had already revealed that bees did not simply mechanically follow floral scents, but could learn and remember environmental cues, providing scientific evidence for the possibility of complex communication among bees.

Source:

1. https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/more-than-mere-insects-the-brilliant-mind-of-charles-henry-turner

2. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8550279/

3. https://cnsu.libguides.com/blog/Dr-Charles-Henry-Turner

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At the beginning of the 20th century, most scientists believed that insects had limited vision and might be colorblind. Von Frisch doubted this view and designed another experiment based on Lubbock's experiment, placing paper cards of different colors near the beehive. One of the blue papers always provided sugar water, while the other colored papers had no food. He repeatedly trained worker bees to go and feed, then withdrew the sugar solution and only kept the paper card. As a result, the bees continued to fly towards the blue paper with sugar before, almost ignoring other colors. To eliminate the factor of brightness and darkness, he also asked bees to choose between colors of the same brightness, and found that bees do make judgments based on the color itself, rather than the contrast of brightness and darkness. This proves that bees can distinguish colors. Von Frisch further speculated that the visual range of bees may extend to ultraviolet light that is invisible to the human eye. He verified the response of bees to ultraviolet light through filtering experiments and found that bees can see patterns reflected by ultraviolet light, but have a weak response to pure red light. This indicates that bees have tricolor vision, which is different from human vision.

Von Frisch published research on bee color vision from 1914 to 1915, confirming that bees have a more diverse visual world than humans. This discovery not only corrects the misconception of insect color blindness but also suggests that bees can find flowers through color clues, providing an environmental basis for their dance communication. Bees can remember the color and position of flowers, and these visual memories may also be involved in communication. Von Frisch established his reputation in the field of animal sensory physiology through his research on bee color perception and sensation.

Source:

1.

https://ijrpr.com/uploads/V5ISSUE6/IJRPR30602.pdf

2. http://labs.plantbio.cornell.edu/wayne/Light%20and%20Life%202015/42315%20Polarized%20light%20and%20bee%20vision.pdf

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Early experiment of  bee dance of von Frisch

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Early experiment of  bee dance of von Frisch

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In the difficult environment of World War II, von Frisch continued to conduct bee experiments. He ingeniously set up feeding stations, placed sugar water feeders at a certain distance from the hive, trained and collected bees to feed, and then marked these bees to return to the hive to observe their dance. By changing the distance and direction of the feeding stations, he recorded the changes in bee dance speed and angle, and eliminated the influence of odor factors. These rigorous designs led him to discover that the speed of running in dance is related to the distance between the food, and the farther the distance, the slower the dance steps. The angle of the wagging fan in dance corresponds to the angle of the nectar source relative to the direction of the sun.

By 1944, von Frisch had deciphered the language of bee dance, and worker bees accurately informed their companions of the direction and distance of food through dance. This marks the success of the experiment and the breakthrough in the mystery of bee language.

Source:

1. https://www.lindahall.org/about/news/scientist-of-the-day/karl-von-frisch/

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Experiment detail and result of bee dance

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Experiment detail and result of bee dance

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In the mid-1940s, Karl von Frisch's experiments made decisive progress. He found that when the honey source is close to the hive, the foraging bees will dance a "round dance" after returning to the nest, attracting other worker bees to search for food near the nest. When the honey source is far away, the bees switch to the "waggle dance": first quickly swing their abdomen in a straight line, and then alternate left and right to form a dance step similar to the number 8. Through extensive observation and measurement, von Frisch revealed the secrets of dance. The form of dance indicates distance; the circular dance represents food within about 75 meters, and the wagging dance represents further distance. The angle of the straight line in the wagging dance relative to the vertical direction is equivalent to the angle of the bee's heading relative to the direction of the sun when it goes out, so it tells its companions which direction to look from the nest. In addition, the duration and frequency of oscillation are also related to distance, with longer oscillation times indicating farther distances. This series of arguments indicates that bee dance is a highly precise symbolic language that can convey information such as direction, distance, and food quality.

The discovery of von Frisch's bee dance was initially announced in the German academic community in 1945. In 1947, his research was translated and disseminated, attracting global attention. The bee dance language is hailed as a major scientific breakthrough during times of war, demonstrating that insects can also engage in complex communication similar to language. This result established his achievement in behavioral studies.

Source:

1. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1973/press-release/

2.

https://www.bpchalihacollege.org.in/online/attendence/classnotes/files/1629390767.pdf

3.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Karl-von-Frisch

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After von Frisch's discovery was published, some scholars were incredulous that an insect could transmit abstract information through symbolic dance, which challenged traditional beliefs. In the early years, entomologists in the UK and the US demanded strict verification. They believe that bees may only follow scent cues to find food, rather than truly recognizing the dance. To this end, von Frisch and his supporters designed experiments in the 1950s that eliminated olfactory factors to demonstrate the independent role of dance information. For example, isolate the dancing bees from the honey source, only allow the bees in the nest to watch the dance, and then observe whether these bees can directly find the odorless station which far away. The results confirmed the role of dance guidance.

Despite this, famous skeptics emerged in the 1960s, such as Adrian M. Wenner, who proposed that bees primarily rely on scent for navigation and do not require dance. There is a heated debate between supporters and opponents regarding whether the bee dance truly has symbolic communication functions, and various control experiments have been conducted. Eventually, with the addition of new technological evidence such as radar tracking and the expansion of research by von Frisch and others, opposition gradually faded away. By the 1970s, most biologists acknowledged the authenticity of bee dance language.

Source:

1.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10739-005-0552-1

2.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/05/050512114116.htm

3.

https://www.mpg.de/789351/W006_Culture-Society_074-080.pdf

4.

https://ccs.ucsb.edu/news/2023/memoriam-professor-adrian-m-wenner-ccs-provost-1989-1993-remembered-1928-2023

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Subsequent development and extension of bee dance

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Subsequent development and extension of bee dance

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The dance of bees has revealed to the scientific community that even simple brains can carry complex information. Von Frisch's discovery spurred the development of the field of neurobehavior, where researchers began to combine behavioral science with neuroscience in an attempt to understand how animals such as bees navigate and communicate at the nervous system level. In the 1970s, scientists used micro electrodes to record the visual and tactile neural responses of bees, studying how the bee brain decodes dance signals; In the 1980s and 1990s, acoustic radar technology was introduced to track the flight routes of bees, confirming that bees could directly fly to target areas based on dance information, supporting the cognitive map hypothesis. A cognitive map is a representation of the environmental space formed by animals in the brain. The study of bee dance provides a model for this concept, where bees may fuse multiple sensory information to form a memory network, allowing them to plan new routes when needed.

In short, the discovery of bee dance language is like a bridge that connects ecology, evolution, and neuroscience, promoting our in-depth exploration of the neural mechanisms of animal cognition and social behavior.

Source:

1.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00359-023-01619-9

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The Application of Bee Dance in Modern Science

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The Application of Bee Dance in Modern Science

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In 2022, Veiner et al. published a study titled "Machine Learning models identify gene predictors of wagon dance behavior in honey bees" in Molecular Ecology Resources. The research team collected transcriptome data of mushroom bodies in the brains of dancing bees and non-dancing bees, trained three machine learning models to classify whether bees perform "waggle dancing", and cross-validated the model output with traditional differential expression analysis results. In the end, they identified two candidate genes closely related to swing dance behavior.

This work is the first to introduce machine learning methods into the neurobiological study of bee social behavior, revealing not only the molecular regulatory basis of swing dance behavior, but also providing powerful tools for decoding complex behavioral phenotypes through gene prediction, demonstrating the interdisciplinary potential of combining the behavioral classics discovered by von Frisch with modern neurogenomics.

Source:

1.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1755-0998.13611

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Carl von Frisch was born into a medical family in Vienna. Since childhood, he has shown a strong interest in the natural world and observed the behavior of insects and fish in his hometown countryside. In 1910, von Frisch obtained his doctoral degree from the University of Munich. During his time in Munich, von Frisch conducted bee experiments in university gardens. In 1919, he discovered that bees could distinguish between different types of sugary drinks through their sense of smell and had color vision, laying the foundation for future dance research. During World War II, his research institute was destroyed in an air raid in 1944, and he briefly taught at the University of Graz. The Nazi regime once deprived his grandmother of her teaching position due to her Jewish heritage, but von Frisch successfully convinced the authorities of the importance of bee pollination in agriculture and gained the opportunity to continue researching bees. In the shadow of war, he achieved a major breakthrough in the language of bee dance in 1944. In 1973, he was awarded the Nobel Prize together with Lorentz and Tinbergen, finally receiving the highest international honor. This not only recognizes his discoveries on bee communication but also acknowledges his pioneering contributions to animal behavior.

Feng Frisch was curious and persevering throughout his life, and when he couldn't study bees in winter, he turned to studying fish hearing. When faced with doubts, he countered with more rigorous experiments. His students and colleagues admire his passion for science and his spirit of persevering in scientific research in adversity. His discovery not only unlocked the secrets of bees but also inspired future scientists. The life story of Carl von Frisch, just as he revealed the language of bee dance, showcases his relentless pursuit and love for exploring the mysteries of nature.

Source:

1.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1973/frisch/facts/

2.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Karl-von-Frisch