428 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 193 8 



After homing, they dance also and the more bees there are dancing in 

 the hive the more appear at the feeding-place. It is clear that the 

 existence of the food is communicated by the dance in the hive. But 

 it is not clear how the bees which have been communicated with can 

 find the feeding-place. How can they know where it is, and where 

 they have to fly? 



The simplest assumption would be that when the discoverer returns 

 to the feeding-place the new bees fly behind it. But that is not the 

 case. The new bees do not fly behind our marked discoverer; they 

 appear at the feeding-place quite independently. 



I could not understand it till I made the following experiment: 

 I fed some of the numbered bees of the observation hive at a feeding- 

 place 40 feet to the west of the hive. In the meadow round the 

 hive to the north, south, west, and east I put glass dishes with sugar 

 water and a little honey on the ground. If the dancer bee dancing 

 in the hive reported where the feeding-place was, the new bees would 

 all fly to the west feeding-place. As a matter of fact, a few minutes 

 after the commencement of the dance new bees appeared at the same 

 time at all the little dishes to the north and south, to the west and 

 east. They did not know where the food was. They flew out in all 

 directions and looked for it. When there were no dances in the hive, 

 the little glass dishes in the meadow were not visited by any bee for 

 many days. As soon as there were dances in the hive, the dishes in 

 the neighborhood were all found within the shortest time. 



But not only in the neighborhood! In further experiments I left 

 the feeding-dish, visited by some numbered bees, at a short distance 

 from the hive. And I put some other dishes farther and farther 

 away in the meadow, observing whether they would be found or not. 

 The farther they were the longer time it took till they were found by 

 the bees sent out by the dancer. In the last experiment they were 

 found after 4 hours in a meadow a full kilometer from the hive, with 

 hills and woods lying between them. It is clear from a long series of 

 experiments that after the commencement of the dances the bees first 

 seek in the neighborhood, and then go farther away, and finally search 

 the whole flying district. 



So the language of bees seemed to be very simple. But feeding 

 from glass dishes is not natural for bees. If we make the conditions 

 more natural, we get a new riddle at once. 



We put the glass dish away, and feed the numbered bees at the 

 same place on flowers, e. g., on cyclamen. Into the flowers we drop 

 sugar water to provide plenty of food. The collecting bees dance 

 after homing. New bees fly out seeking — but seeking something 

 definite. In the vicinity we put a larger dish with cyclamen on the 

 ground, and a similar dish with phlox. The new bees are only 



