Honeybees adjust their dances based on information reliability new study reveals

A new study demonstrates that honeybees can evaluate the reliability of their own communication, actively adjusting the vigor of their "waggle dance" based on the truthfulness of the information they provide. By manipulating whether a dancing bee's followers successfully found food, experiments revealed that only bees with verified, "honest" information increased their recruitment effort over time when advertising a new location, whereas "liar" or "unverified" bees did not. This internal self-control mechanism naturally filters out ambiguous or misleading signals, allowing the hive to function efficiently as a cooperative superorganism.

A new study by Dr. Karmi Oxman and Prof. Sharoni Shafir from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Prof. Ofer Feinderman from the Weizmann Institute of Science has revealed that honeybees have a remarkable ability to assess the reliability of the information they communicate to their hive. The research demonstrates that bees will actively increase their recruitment efforts when they know the directions they are providing to food sources are accurate and verified.

The famous "waggle dance" is the primary method honeybees use to share the location of profitable food sources with their nestmates, utilizing vibration pulses to indicate distance and direction. However, the precision of these dances can vary from bee to bee, prompting researchers to ask how a colony manages the spread of information when the quality of that information differs.

To find out, the research team conducted an experiment at the Benjamin Triwaks Bee Research Center in Rehovot. They set up a system to manipulate the quality of information that specific "focal" bees communicated to their followers.

The scientists established three distinct scenarios for the recruits who followed the dances of the focal bees. In the "honest" treatment, the follower bees flew to the advertised location and successfully fed on sugar solution. In the "liar" treatment, the dancer had access to food, but the followers were met with an entirely empty feeder. Finally, an "unverified" treatment eliminated all feedback by having researchers safely capture the follower bees as soon as they arrived at the location, preventing them from returning to the hive.

During the next stage of the experiment, the food source was moved to a completely new location, and the original focal bees were allowed to dance for this new site. The behavioral changes in the dancing bees were distinct. Bees that had been verified as "honest" in the first stage significantly increased their recruitment effort, performing more dance circuits over time to advertise the new location. Conversely, the "liar" bees did not change their effort levels, and the "unverified" dancers actually decreased the number of circuits they performed.

These findings indicate that honeybees do not just blindly repeat instructions; they adjust the vigor of their communication based on its proven reliability. By increasing the strength of an honest signal, the dancer provides an opportunity for more followers to receive a truthful message.

"A honeybee colony is a superorganism, possessing impressive decision making abilities and collective wisdom," notes Prof. Shafir. "Since the bee is recruiting for the sake of the colony, and not for personal interests, the system is apparently designed to promote honest dancers and to quiet down signals in the face of ambiguity".

This mechanism of sharing confidence relies heavily on individual self-control, helping the tens of thousands of bees within a hive operate efficiently as a single, cooperative superorganism.