Bee dance

Bee dance is a dance performed by honeybees on their return to the hive, by which they communicate directions of a food source to other bees.

It has been known that bees perform this dance for a long time - already Aristotle in 330 B.C. has described this behaviour in his Historia Animalium. It was thought that it serves only the purpose of attracting attention of other bees.

However, in 1947 Karl Von Frisch has been able to relate the runs and turns of the dance to the precise distance and direction of food source from the hive. He has performed several experiments to prove his theory. He was awarded Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1973 for his discoveries.