Dancing bees Dialects Language Commentary

Karl von Frisch entomology

Dancing bees

• On a honeybee’s sense of smell,
• its color vision
• its sensitivity to ultraviolet,
• its sense of light polarization,
• its internal clock,
• its sensitivity to odors,
• including pheromones,
• its ability to sense the earth’s magnetic field
• and its sense of gravity
• On a honeybee’s ability to dance,
• to circle,
• to waggle its abdomen,
• in the precise direction,
• for the precise duration
• and the right number of times
• Lets it communicate with its mates
• what food source to find and where
• and on this depends the health of the hive
• as Karl von Frisch was able to show
• with carefully controlled experiments.

Dialects

• Von Frisch studied
• Apis Mellifera Carnica,
• also known as the Carniolan bee,
• which speaks Slovenian.
• The language of the bee
• varies greatly between varieties.
• Could we say Apis mellifera ligustica
• speaks Italian? Apis mellifera mellifera
• speaks German? Apis mellifera iberiensis
• speaks Spanish? Apis mellifera cecropia
• speaks Greek? Apis cerana nuluensis
• speaks Bornean? Apis cerana indica
• speaks Burmese? Apis cerana cerana
• speaks Vietnamese?
• What Bible student
• would have thought
• that bees were also banned
• from the Tower of Babel?

Language

• If bees could talk, then would they tell
• of their strange world, or would they think
• every thing that lives can dance, know,
• without thinking, the direction of the sun,
• and feel the electric fields of their excitement?
• If you would listen then I would tell you
• something that you didn’t know, using words
• that might seem familiar, but the dear thoughts
• of other creatures, if we can call them thinkers,
• are spoken in an unexpected tongue.