A Wiggle and a Waggle: The Dance of the Bees
Pranoy Thipaiah observes a swarm of bees at his estate in Chikmagalur, and the sophisticated waggle dance they employ to encode and communicate information.
There’s a lot of talk — buzz, if you like — about bees at the moment, and rightly so. These little critters quite literally, make our food — pollinating flowers which then slowly become what we eat on the daily. No bees = no food. It’s really that simple.
‘Save the Bees’ is a slogan that’s gone from a handmade hippie cardboard sign to a genuine universal plea for their preservation as an essential part of our ecosystems. It’s always fascinated me that we call bees ಜೇನು / jenu in Kannada, and honey ಜೇನು ತುಪ್ಪ / jenu thuppa which translates to bee ghee. They’re part and parcel of our lives.
We now read about the poisoning of bees due to agricultural chemical cocktails around the world; we witness the intrusive and harmful method of smoking hives out for honey all over India. Things have reached a tipping point.
Not only are we at risk of biodiversity loss, but also a deep understanding of things around us.
My exposure to bees has largely been at Kerehaklu in Chikmagalur, where I live and work, but also in parts of urban India and Australia. I remember first getting chased and then stung by bees as a seven-year-old, while trying to retrieve a football stuck on a ledge. I ran into the house crying, after a sting or two on the top of my left ear that felt like piercing needles. My ear puffed up completely — looking almost like the ‘cauliflower ears’ that Olympic wrestlers get after repeated grapples.
As kids in Bangalore, we would always also see greyish-black hives neatly lining the top of tall buildings on MG road. The hives were home to an army of bees — moving subtly, making dark shapes that shimmered in the sunlight — much like a school of fish stuck moving in unison, never revealing their individual structures. Even from a distance, you could tell that their movements were in response to each other, poetic as ripples on the surface of calm water.
An Early Introduction to Bees
While in Sydney, I lived in a shared apartment for a while where we would all stock our pantry with condiments that anyone could help themselves to. The star of the show was always Manuka honey — so incredibly beneficial (and at times, expensive) that you might sometimes get fake ones if you’re not careful. Manuka honey has been used by the mighty Maoris of New Zealand for centuries, sometimes to dress wounds, other times even as throat lozenges thanks to its unique antibacterial properties from pollination of the Manuka plant. I realised how diverse honey was — not just in terms of flavour, but also in its properties, dependent on the food source and the species of bee.
In December 2022, at the Kerehaklu coffee drying yard, there was a swarm that we would often hear overhead — either heading out to forage, or returning from one. We’d first hear them, and then, a few seconds later, thousands of bees, flying with purpose and precision, would momentarily block out the sun (recreating in my mind, that spectacular scene from the movie 300, where arrows darkened the sky). We have a lot of respect for bees in Chikmagalur; their hives, their flight paths. When we hear the swarm, we immediately duck down, crouching under the raised beds that our coffee is drying on, unsure if the bees will actually turn their attention to the sweet, fermented coffee beans that we have been so carefully drying.
There are a few species that I have come across in my years of hikes and harvests around Kerehaklu that I would describe as brave and selfless. Jim Corbett always spoke of the Indian wild boar being arguably the most dangerous — especially mothers with young piglets. I agree with Mr. Corbett, but have to make my case for two invertebrates: the weaver ant and the giant honeybee. I personally consider them some of the bravest creatures I have ever come across — literally sacrificing themselves for the good of the group.
The Dance of the Bees
Let me tell you about the waggle dance of the bees. The waggle dance, despite what it sounds like, is not a set of moves you bust out for a Chuck Berry song where you’re sharing the dance floor with two versions of Marty McFly. But this is actually the name given to a phenomenon that encapsulates the intelligence of these amazing little beings; something that they do on their daily foraging expeditions.
The swarms are tightly-knit in every sense of the word: they protect their queen and each other, and communicate closely to make sure every one survives. They head out in different directions in search of a sugar sources, important for their sustenance and growth. Upon return, they need to exchange information about their discoveries. And they do this through a dance!
The hive is densely-populated with bees — all busy going about their business, but working together for the colony. After an exploratory expedition, there is usually one bee spinning around almost aggressively — significantly more so than its hive-mates. This excited bee is trying to tell the rest of the hive something: it has hit the jackpot! He may have come across our Gwen avocados at Kerehaklu, or chanced upon some Totapuri mango flowers in the old Bangalore bungalows of Jayanagar.
He must now explain two huge factors to his fellow bees: the direction and distance of the food source — not an easy thing to do out in the open, having often covered vast areas. And so it’s time to boogie.
The rapid movements of this one eager bee quickly gathers the attention of the rest. They slowly move apart and then come together, watching closely — almost like a final stage of a dance-off as the gathered crowd ooh’s and aah’s. But this is an important step they must all pay close attention to, to find this food source themselves. The beauty of the dance is that it is a kind of a code — I guess, comparable to Morse in a sense, but in this case, uses the sun and mathematics.
A Highly Sophisticated Code
The waggle dance, scientists have discovered, consists of a figure-eight pattern, with the bee wiggling and waggling its abdomen side-to-side while walking in a straight line. The angle and duration of this waggle, as well as the direction the bee faces while doing so, both encode important information, specifically, the direction and distance of the food source, both relative to the position of the sun in the sky!
If a bee waggles straight up on the comb, it indicates that the food source is directly in the direction of the sun. But, if a bee waggles at an angle, it’s trying to communicate that the food source is located in that particular direction — relative to the sun. The duration of the waggle correlates with the distance of the food source: in other words, a longer waggle indicate a greater distance. The complexity of this communication is the tip of the iceberg — there’s so much wisdom in the natural world around us that we take for granted.
The importance of bees in our lives cannot be overstated — they play a vital role in India's agricultural systems. They provide essential ecosystem services to ensure food security across niches, small and large. It’s as simple as this — we need to protect them and we need to learn from them. Not only do we face the risk of losing thousands of species, but also the challenge of comprehending the world that surrounds us.
The waggle dance — their means of essential communication — may be the talk of their town, but fairly unknown to us. Their intelligence is amazing and completely underestimated — the more we know, the more we can share. Much like the bees on their daily forages, we all need to stop and smell the roses.
All photographs by Pranoy Thipaiah.
Pranoy Thipaiah is a specialty coffee and avocado producer in Chikmagalur, Karnataka. Since May 2017, he’s focused on bringing the produce of his seventy-year old family estate, Kerehaklu, to the best kitchens and coffee roasteries in India and beyond here.
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