THE DANCING ROBOT

The experimenters placed eight baits around the hive and programmed the robot to dance concerning
one site. Observers in the field recorded the approach of searching bees. Most of the robot's
recruits went to the bait indicated by its dance.

Bees, it turns out, can hear, and their ears are well suited for detecting the sounds associated with the dances. Observation of how the insects respond to a robot that dances and sings like a live forager shows that both sound and dance are needed to communicate information about the location of food. Silent dances, the experiment demonstrates, communicate nothing, and sound without dance also fails. Odors too are involved but appear to lack importance. Beyond these issues, we have also recently learned much more about the nature of the dance sounds, the bees' sense of hearing and the aspects of the dance that are most essential in the communication.