THE LANGUAGE OF BEES 



By Prof. K. von Frisch 

 The University of Munich 



To understand the language of bees it is first necessary to know 

 something about the senses of bees. The senses of bees are of 

 special interest for biologists, because bees are flower-visiting insects. 

 Since the time of the German naturalist Cbr. K. Sprengel, more than 

 140 years ago, we distinguish two main types of flower in the higher 

 plants. A great many plants have small, scarcely visible blossoms 

 without any scent, and their pollination is effected by the wind. 

 Such blossoms have plenty of pollen, which is spread by the wind and 

 comes by chance to other blossoms of the same species. The other 

 plants have conspicuous, brightly colored blossoms, or a striking 

 scent, or both colors and scent. We call them flowers. Such flowers 

 produce honey, and they are therefore visited by feeding insects, 

 which effect the pollination quickly and surely by flying from one 

 flower to the next one of the kind. It seems probable that the flowers 

 have their color and scent to make them more striking for the visitors. 

 In this way, the insects can more easily find them and get their food, 

 and the pollination of the flowers is guaranteed. 



Sprengel's view was not accepted by all naturalists. There was a 

 controversy on this subject for many years, especially concerning the 

 function of the colors of flowers. Even 25 years ago Professor Hess 

 asserted that bees and all other insects are color-blind. If this is true, 

 the colors of flowers cannot be of the biological significance that 

 Sprengel thought. I tried, therefore, to find out whether bees can 

 distinguish colors. 



The honey bee is a social insect. It lives in a beehive. In such a 

 hive there are about 70,000 bees, only one of which is a fully developed 

 female, the queen, the only egg-laying insect of all the inhabitants of 

 a beehive. The males are plumper, and very stupid and lazy. Most 

 of the inhabitants are worker bees. They are not able to produce 

 eggs under normal circumstances. But they do all the work in the 

 hive, they feed the larvae, they build the wax combs, they are the 

 charwomen in the hive, and only the worker bees fly out to get honey 

 and pollen as food for the inhabitants. 



« Lecture delivered at University College, London, March 1937. Reprinted by permission from Science 

 Progress, vol. 32, No. 125, July 1937. 



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