Von Frisch’s study using honey bees
- Karl Von Frisch was an ethologist who disagreed with the idea of other experts that honey bees were colour-blind
- He set up an experiment that enabled him to observe the behaviour of bees when attracted by a glass of sugar syrup that he laid out for them on different coloured platforms
- What happened next astonished Von Frisch and led to a serendipitous discovery:
- The bees appeared to perform a little ‘dance’ to communicate specific details as to the location of food to other members of the colony
- Von Frisch set up a controlled observation by placing bees in glass hives and found that:
- When food was placed less than 100 metres away from the bee (who was returning to the hive) the bee would perform a circular dance: this was to indicate to the other bees that food was close to the hive which resulted in the other bees setting off to find it
Von Frisch bee study diagram
The circular/round dance of the honey bee’
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- The second dance performed by the honey bee is known as the ‘waggle dance’ and it has more complexity than the circular/round dance
- The waggle dance is designed to communicate the location and distance of the food source to the other bees in the hive
- The waggle dance consists of the bee performing a figure of eight pattern and ‘waggling’ its abdomen in the middle section of the figure; this indicates where pollen is to be found e.g. ‘follow this direction for food!’
- If the bee performs the waggle dance slowly it means that the food is some distance away from the hive
The waggle dance of the honey bee.
- Von Frisch concluded that bees have an advanced and sophisticated communication system that has clear evolutionary advantages as finding food sources using a reliable method has clear links to survival
Worked example
Here is an example of a question you might be asked on this topic - for AO3.
AO1: You need to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of key concepts, ideas, theories and research.
AO2: You need to apply your knowledge and understanding, usually referring to the ‘stem’ in order to do so (the stem is the example given before the question)
AO3: You need to analyse and evaluate key concepts, ideas, theories and research.
After each featured question there is a ‘model’ answer i.e. one which would achieve top marks in the exam.
AO3
Question: Evaluate Von Frisch’s bee study. [5 marks]
Model answer:
- Von Frisch’s bee study was a carefully controlled observation in which he was able to observe the actions of honey bees in a specially constructed glass hive.
- The use of controlled conditions means that the data is likely to be reliable and consistent over time
- Extraneous variables (e.g. the difficulty in locating a food source) have been removed from the experimental environment.
- However the use of the glass hives does mean that the bees were not in their natural environment which lowers the validity of the study (e.g. the bees might have been stressed by the unnatural hive and this could have affected their usual behaviour.).
- Moreover Von Frisch could only make inferences or assumptions about what the round dance and the waggle dance meant to the bees: there is no concrete way of knowing exactly what the bees were communicating to each other.
