Eavesdropping may be rude, but snooping on honeybee conversations could reveal a lot about the environment. Their unique mode of communication, the waggle dance, contains clues about the health of the landscape they live in. In effect, the bees are giving a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to different methods of conservation.
A worker honeybee performs the waggle dance to tell her hive mates where the best food is located. That suggests the dance can indicate areas of the landscape that are healthy, at least in terms of food for pollinators.
To test this, and her colleagues from the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK, videoed and decoded 5484 waggle dances from three laboratory-maintained honeybee colonies living in 94 square kilometres of rural and urban landscapes. They divided the area into various conservation schemes, regulated by the UK government, and mapped which areas were most frequented by the bees over two years.
Advertisement
鈥淯sing honeybee colonies as biomonitors for environmental health is an idea that researchers have been interested in,鈥� says from the University of California, San Diego. 鈥淗owever, this study uses a far larger sample size and examines the data in a more sophisticated way.鈥�
Happy foraging
Most honeybees cast their votes for , a nature reserve rich in wildflowers, 2 kilometres from the hives. The bees also preferred to feed on farms covered by schemes. Such farms are supposed to set aside part of their land for wildlife and wildflowers, which may explain why the bees liked them.
However the bees did not seem particularly enticed by farms covered by . While organic farming may seem harmonious with healthy wildlife, these schemes involve regular cutting and mowing in the first few years. 鈥淲hat that probably means for honeybees is that there are no flowers at all, just short grass,鈥� says Couvillon.
Listening in on honeybee conversations could be a quick and cost-effective way of evaluating costly management schemes that aim to make lands more wildlife-friendly, Couvillon says. What鈥檚 more, honeybees are generalists, so identifying areas that they prefer could help other pollinators like bumblebees and butterflies.
But honeybees may not tell us everything we need to know, says of Queen Mary, University of London. He says they probably prefer whichever area offers the most nectar or pollen, regardless of whether it is a diverse wildflower meadow or a vast monoculture. 鈥淪o what鈥檚 good for the honeybee is not necessarily good for any other species.鈥�
Journal reference:
