How do bees send messages?

Bees are social insects, and they live a socialized life. Individuals in the bee colony also have all kinds of information exchange like humans. They have no language, and transmit information mainly through bee dance, vocalization and bee pheromone.

Bee dance is a kind of body language. Bees use different forms of body movements and different swinging frequencies to convey certain information. At present, the most deeply studied bee dance is round dance and tail wagging dance. Round dance means that the dancing worker bees find the honey source within 100 meters from the nest and tell their companions to go out and collect it. Tail wagging dance refers to the dancing worker bees looking for honey sources at a distance of 100 meters from the nest. Another bee dance found is the crescent dance; When dividing bees, bees summon their companions' "whirring dance" in zigzag; And alarm dance, cleaning dance, massage dance and back-belly trembling dance.

Bees often make some sounds to convey some information in their lives. For example, when the honey flow is large, the bee farm often makes a loud buzz, which may be a labor song to encourage colleagues to actively collect and brew honey. Within a few hours after the bee colony loses its king, it will make a "poop-poop" sound to send a message. When a virgin leaves the room, the virgin queen who leaves the room first will make a "squeak" sound, and the other mature queens in the same group will make the same response sound.

In addition to the above-mentioned ways of transmitting information between bees, there are many information transmitted through chemicals, which can transmit information between the same species. These substances are called pheromones. Bee pheromones mainly include queen bee pheromone, worker bee pheromone, drone pheromone and larva pheromone. They convey a lot of complicated information about bee behavior. For example, the queen bee pheromone can make worker bees feel the existence of the queen bee; Worker bee pheromones can be used as navigation signals to tell bees the way back to their nests, and can also be used as alarm signals to guide other bees to attack enemies. The pheromone of bee larvae can make worker bees feel the existence of larvae, tell them the state of hunger and let worker bees feed them.