The BeeHolder, April 2011

In the dance world, not all bees are equal. In a colony of bees at any one moment, each element has a special task, be it laying of eggs (the queen) collecting propolis, or scouting for nectar and performing dances (the round dance for nearby forage, the figure of 8 dance if it is more than 100 metres away), to increase her comrades enthusiasm for a good source or diminish it when the supply is running low. However some foragers master this type of communication perfectly, while others are noticeably less gifted.

Wolfgang Kirchner and his team, at the university of Bochum in the Ruhr have discovered in their research into bee behaviour that specialisation even extends to the dances. The workers must perform several types of dance, but those that are more gifted for one type of dance are less so for another.

The most surprising thing is that this 'gift' is hereditary! All the workers in a hive have the same mother but they may have different fathers. At any given time there will be sisters and half sisters. Kirchner's team examined the dancers' genes after noting the frequency with which each bee practised one or other of the dances. The result was astonishing! The 17 groups of 'true' sisters were noted and sorted according to their preference for each type of dance. The results showed that the predilection for using the figure of 8 dance over the round dance or vice-versa was significantly related to the sibling grouping.

For Kirchner's team, that proves the importance of genes inherited from the father. According to which father she has, a forager will be more or less specialised in one or other of the dances, more or less assiduous in the performance of two communication codes that are related but different. If it were not the genetic inheritance, you would have to suppose that true sisters can recognise each other and regroup inside the colony to practise a kind of nepotism in certain activities!

Impossible! says Kirchner. How on earth would they manage it?

Article from Huntingdonshire BKA, AMC and courtesy of BEES