Honeybees’ Waggle Dance Reveals Bees in Rural Areas Travel Farther for Food
Published:10 Nov.2021 Source:British Ecological Society
By decoding honeybees' waggle dances, which tell other bees where to find food, researchers have found that bees in agricultural areas travel further for food than those in urban areas. The findings are published in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology.
In the study, researchers at Royal Holloway University and Virginia Tech decoded 2827 waggle dances across 20 western honeybee colonies in London and surrounding agricultural areas. The information conveyed in the dances told the researchers that foraging trip distances were consistently shorter in urban areas compared to agricultural areas.