waggle dance

American  

noun

1. a series of patterned movements performed by a scouting bee, communicating to other bees of the colony the direction and distance of a food source or hive site.

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Example Sentences

Scientists have spent years decoding the honey bee "waggle dance," a highly sophisticated form of communication.

From Science Daily • Mar. 24, 2026

Insects are known to be capable of social learning in the wild: the best-known example is the so-called waggle dance used by honeybees to communicate the location and quality of flowers.

From Scientific American • Mar. 7, 2023

Honeybees communicate to each other using a waggle dance that depends heavily on choreography.

From Salon • Aug. 18, 2022

Honeybees also use the waggle dance to communicate the location of rewarding flower patches to nest-mates.

From Nature • Apr. 21, 2015

They return to the hive one by one, indicating, by a waggle dance first analyzed by Martin Lindauer 60 years ago, both the location and the quality of the site.

From New York Times • Sep. 27, 2010