Bees learn to dance

Many animals can guide or call other members of their group to a rich foraging site (1–3). By contrast, honey bees have a distinctive form of communication that allows them to send nestmates to the location of a food source by using symbols. The coordinates are encoded by intricate movements (the “dance”) on the vertical wax comb in the hive, using gravity and time as references. The motions are followed by recruits in the darkness of the hive, who subsequently decode the extracted flight vector information and follow the dancer’s instructions once outside (4). Like many of the elaborate behaviors of social insects, this communication system was thought to be innate. However, on page 1015 of this issue, Dong et al. (5) reveal that honey bees only deliver precise spatial information in their dances if they previously had the opportunity to attend dances by experienced role models—the communication system must in part be learnt socially.