Fascinating communication in honey bees

Forager bees communicate their floral findings in order to recruit other worker bees of the hive to forage in the same area. The factors that determine recruiting success are including evaluations of the quality of nectar and/or pollen brought in. The waggle dance and odor plume are the two hypotheses for explaining “foragers recruit other workers bees in hive”. The dance theory is far more widely accepted, and has far more empirical support than the odor theory. Supporters of the dance theory often grant odor a significant role in recruitment, while supporters of the odor theory have claimed that the dance is essentially irrelevant to recruitment.