A tale of two dances.

摘要

A honey bee colony must cope with great variation in the supply of nectar, as honey flows alternate with times of scarcity. When nectar is plentiful, a colony must increase both the nectar foragers, older bees which gather the nectar from the flowers, and the nectar receivers, middle-age bees who receive and store the freshly collected nectar. Additional nectar foragers are activated by means of one dance, the waggle dance. This dance is performed by foragers that have found rich sources of nectarand have not experienced difficulty finding a receiver bee upon return to the hive. Additional nectar receivers are also activated by a dance, the tremble dance. This dance, like the waggle dance, is performed foragers that have found rich sources of nectar. But what tells these bees to perform tremble dances rather than waggle dances is the experience of difficulty in finding a receiver bee. By performing the tremble dance, a nectar forager activates more bees to function as receiver bees, thereby eliminating a bottleneck in a colony's honey-production process.