Behav Ecol Sociobiol (2005) 59: 133–142 DOI 10.1007/s00265-005-0019-6 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Jacobus C. Biesmeijer · Thomas D. Seeley The use of waggle dance information by honey bees throughout their foraging careers Received: 16 February 2005 / Revised: 18 May 2005 / Accepted: 22 May 2005 / Published online: 23 August 2005 C  Springer-Verlag 2005 Abstract We studied the extent to which worker honey bees acquire information from waggle dances throughout their careers as foragers. Small groups of foragers were monitored from time of orientation flights to time of death and all in-hive behaviors relating to foraging were recorded. In the context of a novice forager finding her first food source, 60% of the bees relied, at least in part, on ac- quiring information from waggle dances (being recruited) rather than searching independently (scouting). In the con- text of an experienced forager whose foraging has been interrupted, 37% of the time the bees resumed foraging by following waggle dances (being reactivated) rather than examining the food source on their own (inspecting). And in the context of an experienced forager engaged in for- aging, 17% of the time the bees initiated a foraging trip by following a waggle dance. Such dance following was observed much more often after an unsuccessful than after a successful foraging trip. Successful foragers often fol- lowed dances just briefly, perhaps to confirm that the kind of flowers they had been visiting were still yielding for- age. Overall, waggle dance following for food discovery accounted for 12–25% of all interactions with dancers (9% by novice foragers and 3–16% by experienced foragers) whereas dance following for reactivation and confirmation accounted for the other 75–88% (26% for reactivation and 49–62% for confirmation). We conclude that foragers make extensive use of the waggle dance not only to start work at new, unfamiliar food sources but also to resume work at old, familiar food sources. Communicated by M. Giurfa J. C. Biesmeijer Centre for Biodiversity & Conservation, School of Biology, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK T. D. Seeley () Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA e-mail: tds5@cornell.edu Fax: +1-607-2544308 Keywords Animal communication . Honeybees . Recruitment . Scouting . Waggle dance Introduction Ever since von Frisch (1946) deciphered the message en- coded in the honey bee’s famous waggle dance, numerous investigators have taken up the study of this remarkable form of animal communication. They have conducted hun- dreds of studies that have examined the mechanisms of the dance (reviewed in von Frisch 1967; Michelsen 2003; Dyer 2002), the ecological significance of the dance (re- viewed in Seeley 1995), and the evolutionary origins of the dance (von Frisch 1967, pp. 321–328; Gould and Towne 1987; Dyer and Seeley 1989). It is now clear, for example, that Karl von Frisch was correct in his claim that dance followers can use location information acquired from the dance to find the indicated food source (Gould 1976; Esch et al. 2001; Riley et al. 2005) and that the waggle dance contributes to the foraging success of a honey bee colony when food sources are patchy and ephemeral (Sherman and Visscher 2002; Dornhaus and Chittka 2004). To date, however, one fundamental question about the waggle dance has received surprisingly little attention: To what extent do bees follow waggle dances, and so make use of this marvelous communication system, during their careers as foragers? To answer this question, it is important to distinguish three contexts in which a foraging bee can acquire useful information from waggle dances (reviewed by Biesmeijer and de Vries 2001; see Fig. 1): (1) a novice forager that is finding her first food source, (2) an experienced forager that has been interrupted in foraging, and (3) an experienced forager that is engaged in foraging. A novice forager can find her first food source either by following a waggle dance and using the dance information to guide her search (being a recruit) or by searching independently without following dances (being a scout; Lindauer 1952; Seeley 1983). An experienced forager whose foraging has been interrupted, for example by nightfall or a rainstorm or a daytime dip in her flowers’