Communication Among Social Bees

by Martin Lindauer

Book by Lindauer, Martin

143 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1961

Reviews

[Karen]

I really enjoyed going back to one of the source books about dance communication of social bees having read so much about it in general text books. It is written in a very accessible style. It was interesting to learn about different dance dialects and how the bees sensors behind the head interpret gravity so that they can translate horizontal direction to the vertical plane of the comb.

[Elijah Cohen]

Pretty easy read, everything is laid out in clear terms and the language is accessible to someone who considers themselves an outsider. A great and cool overview of behaviours and the social roles of various bees. Gets into dance interpretation and dialects between and within species, the changing responsibilities of individuals within a hive. I particularly liked the bits about temperature regulation within the hive, and how swarms decide on hive locations. Fun little read

[Erin Reynolds]

This book is easy to digest but goes into a satisfying level of detail describing how bees communicate using the "tail-wagging dance". This book thoroughly describes experiments that the author's group performed, and even addresses conflicting viewpoints from other labs in the appendix. One of my favorite things about this book (besides learning some mind-blowing facts about bees), was the drawings and figures to explain the experiments. They have a quaint, vintage aesthetic to me and it is also really cool to see the raw data.