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Communication

How do bees tell each other where to find good flowers?

For a long time, scientists wondered how one bee could find a great place for nectar, go back to the hive, and then lots of other bees would come to the same place. It seemed that the first bee must be able to tell the other bees where to go!

We now know that the bee can communicate with other bees by doing a special dance. It wiggles and jiggles in a particular way, and the other bees around it can feel what it is doing. The direction it moves and the way it moves tells the other bees, "Hey, there's a great source of nectar if you fly to the North East for five minutes. Let's go!"

If you can see a lot of bees crowding round each other, they are probably concentrating on hearing the news from a bee dance!

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