Bees about 10 days old without experienced dance partners performed the waggle dance more inconsistently than their 10-day-old counterparts in hives with experienced bees, the study found.

Bees in the colony follow the dance through physical contact with the dancer, he added. A close-up of a honeybee (center) waggle dancing. Bees guide fellow workers to pollen with these moves.

The "dance" involves waggling their abdomens in the shape of a figure eight, and it's done at a remarkably fast pace: A bee can move an entire body length in less than one second.

Bees typically begin to dance when they reach the right age and always follow the lead of experienced dancers first, but in these experimental colonies, ...

One bee performs a little dance where she walks in a circle, then does a wiggle, and walks in the opposite direction, repeating her wiggle. Beekeepers call this the waggle dance, ...

In waggle dancing, foraging bees have to master not only the moves but the obstacles of the honeycomb dance floor. A cell may be empty. “It’s just the edges to hang on to….

Aristotle observed the waggle dance and noted bees kept returning to the same flowers. In 1973, Austrian biologist Karl von Frisch won a Nobel Prize in part for translating the dance’s meaning.

Waggle dance communication is complex, and the bees' task is further complicated by having to perform on vertical, irregular honeycomb stages with no light, said study coauthor James Nieh, ...

One bee performs a little dance where she walks in a circle, then does a wiggle, and walks in the opposite direction, repeating her wiggle. Beekeepers call this the waggle dance, ...

Booty-shaking worker bees guide their fellow workers to pollen by a form of communication known as “waggle dancing” — performing steps that map out where food is located and how far it is ...