THE LANGUAGE OF BEES — VON FRISCH 429 



interested in cyclamen. They take no notice of phlox. Now we 

 change the flowers at the feeding-place and put food in phlox blos- 

 soms. After 5 or 10 minutes the situation at the observation place 

 changes, the new bees now are not interested in cyclamen, they only 

 alight on phlox and search through the flowers, examining them as if 

 they were convinced there must be food there. Everywhere in 

 neighboring gardens where phlox plants are we can observe questing 

 bees — a curious sight for everybody aware that bees cannot get 

 honey from phlox blossoms and therefore never visit phlox under 

 normal circumstances. The dancer bee has not only reported that 

 there is food, but also in what kind of flowers it is to be found. 



In performing this experiment I succeeded with all kinds of flowers 

 with the exception of flowers without any scent. And so it is not 

 difficult to find out the manner of communication. When the 

 collecting bee alights on the scented flowers to suck up the food, the 

 scent of the flower is taken up by its body-surface and hairs, and when 

 it dances after homing the interested bees following the movements 

 of the dancer bee, and holding their antennae against its body, per- 

 ceive the specific scent on its body and know what kind of scent must 

 be sought to find the good feeding-place announced by the dancing 

 bee. That this view is correct can be proved easily. We feed some 

 numbered bees, giving them sugar water in a glass dish, on a card- 

 board on which some essential oil has been dropped. Then, in the 

 neighborhood on the ground, we put some cardboards with drops of 

 various essential oils on them. The bees sent out by our dancer bees 

 are only interested in the scent of the essential oil dropped on the 

 feeding-cardboard, and alight on every place and everything provided 

 with this scent. They take no notice of cardboards provided with 

 other essential oils. 



It is thus seen that there is a biological function of flower scent not 

 known before. The dancing bee can communicate a message about 

 all kinds of scented flowers by means of the scent adhering to its body. 



But the language of bees is still more perfect than has been shown 

 up to now. A little variation of our experiment makes this clear. 

 At the feeding-place we put sugar water in the glass dish, and we 

 renew all sugar water taken away by the collecting bees. There is 

 plenty of food. The collecting bees dance after homing, and new 

 bees continually come out, and more and more discover the feeding- 

 place. Now we remove the full glass dish and we put in its place a 

 glass dish provided with some sheets of filter paper moistened from 

 beneath with a little sugar water by means of a syringe. Now there is 

 a scarcity of food. It is troublesome to suck it up, and takes a long 

 time. Now the bees do not dance after homing. They deliver the 

 food to other bees and return to the feeding-place, they continue to 

 collect the food no less industriously, but they do not dance, and so 



