COMMUNICATION AMONG INSECTS McINDOO 547 



individual. Judging from Von Frisch's investigation, this theory 

 is correct in that scouts do find food and do communicate this infor- 

 mation to the other bees, but they do not lead a party of their hive 

 mates to it. The most interesting part of Von Frisch's results con- 

 cerns the method used by the scouts to inform other bees about the 

 food which they have found. 



In his preliminary experiments Von Frisch put sugar water in 

 small dishes, which were placed in the open some distance from the 

 observation hive. He then watched the scout bees when they came 

 to the sugar water, then counted the bees visiting it after the scouts 

 had found it. After being convinced that scouts caused other bees 

 to come to the sugar water, he wondered how the scouts had informed 

 their hive mates. He then watched the scouts in observation hives 

 immediately upon their return from the sugar water, and invariably 

 found that the successful scout rushed into the hive, gently crossed 



Figure 1. — Diagrams ot worker bees on houeycomb. A, a sugar-water or nectar collec- 

 tor (lowermost bee) wbich has returned to the hive and is feeding three other 

 bees ; B, a nectar collector (the bee just below the arrow) followed by four at- 

 tending bees, performing the round dance ; C, the movements made by a pollen 

 collector while performing the tail-wagging dance. (After von Frisch) 



her palpitating antennae with those of other workers coming in con- 

 tact with her, and immediately began sharing her sugar water with 

 the other bees (fig. 1, A). By the time she had reached the thickest 

 group of bees on the comb, she began the peculiar circular, or round, 

 dance, which will be described in detail under the following heading. 

 After repeating these experiments many times. Von Frisch con- 

 vinced himself that the scout bees which first found the dish of sugar 

 water did not accompany the other bees to it ; he observed that before 

 a scout had disappeared among the bees in the hive the other collect- 

 ors had rushed from the hive ; by actually timing them he determined 

 that nearly all of them had appeared at the same dish five minutes 

 after coming in contact with the scout. Furthermore, while watching 

 scouts passing from their dancing spots to the hive entrance and 

 from there to the food supply he never observed other would-be 

 collectors f oUowine; them. 



