Bee communication or bee dance.

 

If a worker bee has found a good location with plenty of flowers and nectar, she will tell her sisters, the other worker bees.
She does this by performing a dance. She first lets the other worker bees smell her body where she has stored pollen.  She also lets them taste some of the nectar she brought along.  In this manner the others know what kind of flowers she has found.  The worker bee then performs a dance to indicate the direction and the distance between the flowers and the hive.

There are 2 types:  the round dance and the waggle dance.

 

 

The round dance.  When the flowers are located within 100m of the hive, the worker bee will start dancing around.  

The longer she dances, the more flowers there are.  Her sisters now know that they have to look for the flowers they smelled and tasted in the vicinity of the hive.

 

 

 

 

The waggle dance is a bit more complicated.

The worker bee runs through a small figure-eight pattern. And she waggles her abdomen. This shows the other worker bees that the flowers are located more than 100m away. The manner in which the worker bee dances gives them more information about the direction they have to follow.  And that is very remarkable.