Question

A scout bee, finding a new food source, communicates its location to other bees and

• A. Cannot communicate the direction of the food source
• B. Can communicate the direction of the food source by round dance
• C. Can communicate the direction of the food source by tail-wagging dance
• D. Can communicate the direction of the food source by rapid dance

Answer 1

The correct option is C Can communicate the direction of the food source by tail-wagging dance

• A scout bee, finding a new food source, communicates its location to other bees and can communicate the direction of the food source by tail-wagging dance. When scout bees find a new potential home, they do a waggle dance to broadcast to other scout bees where the nest is and how suitable it is for the swarm. The nest with the most support, in the end, becomes the new home.
• But new research in this field shows another layer of complexity to the decision-making process: The bees deliver "stop signals" via head butts to scouts favoring a different site. With enough head butts, a scout bee will stop its dance, decreasing the apparent support for that particular nest.
• This process of excitation (waggle dances) and inhibition (head butts) in the bee swarm parallels how a complex brain makes decisions using neurons.