Customer Reviews (2)

a very in-depth reference!
This is a fascinating book, completely walking step-by-step through all of von Frisch's experiments. It describes his methods for finding out if and how bees react to different things such as size, shape, color, and distance. It also explains the differences in the bee races and their benefits when hybridized. It is amazing to read about how someone watched this communication, previously unknown, completely unfold into the world of bees where polarized light is your guide, and your dances tell the hive how far away their flowers are, or water, and how good of a source it is.

Bees can talk by Xavier Lesage
This book unveils a marvelous language between animals. After reading it you can not any more smash a bee!

The content of the discovery is impressive : one bee can tell her colleague that there is food at 1 300meters in the North-West direction... Animals can talk using a symboliclanguage and we know their words.

The thorough methodology used by Karlvan Frisch and his students is very impressive as well. No place is leftfor doubt. 20 years of experiments are described with a German luxury ofdetails. This is a scientific lesson in those time where we do not acceptresponse time exceeding 2 seconds when browsing the web desperatly lookingfor information. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Beautiful Narrative
Dance, a manifestation of our insatiable thirst for patterns. A spontaneous outbreak of joy or ritualistic expression of emotion and experience. For honeybees, it is their version of the powerpoint that they use in a daily attempt to enthuse coworkers.
Karl von Frisch won the Nobel Prize for his lifelong pursuit of the 'nectar' of knowledge. He was the first to understand and admire the honeybee dance. His other acheivement is the book Dancing Bees, an eloquent and delightful distillation of his life's work. He manages the acrobatic feat of weaving a gripping tale around bar-graphs and the arcane physics of light polarization ...and this, 55 years back without the help of any animated graphics or multimedia presentations or even a waggle dance.
The honeybee is a true marvel of engineering. Every wee bit of its puny body has evolved to perform some function. Breeches to carry pollen, two sacs to carry honey and nectar, a few thousand polarizing light filters, the honeybee is equipped from birth for a life of service.
Think about the gadgetry you are destroying the next time you swat a bee with the newspaper.
A few minutes with that little thing will probably teach us more about the world than the sunday magazine that ends its life.
Notions of our superiority are so entrenched in my mind that I find it hard to believe these bees can accomplish so much.
Every bee takes its turn in feeding the young, cleaning the comb, and fetching nectar. They have an exqusite inner circadian clock and can estimate the distances they fly with great precision. They can accurately home in on their residence from a distance of two miles. And they can communicate the location of the nectar-filled flowers to the other bees. They waggle enthusiastically only when they sip the nectar that has a certain percentage of sugar. With their exuberant dance, they communicate the type of flower that was so plentiful, the location of the flowers ,and the richness of the nectar. It must be a great sight to watch these bees get excited when they receive this bearer of wonderful news (and the author assures us that they do).
The researchers studying this behavior have taken some wonderfully quirky measures to ensure the cooperation of these suspicious bees. They hoodwink gatekeeper bees into letting in honeybees tainted by the touch of man (which the researchers do to identify the bees) by brushing them with honey, and bribe the scouting honeybees to convey enthusiasm by plying them with sugar-rich solutions. The bees oblige us by revealing their secret lives.
Should I be struck by the wonderful complexity of nature, or the unique human ability to comprehend this complexity? ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A little-known gem
I was required to read this for a psychology class, as it gives an example of the scientific method at its finest.Von Frisch starts off by listing the questions he has about bees, and then seeks replicable, measurable ways to answer his questions.What can bees see?Which colors?Can they learn?Can they communicate, and how?What do they prefer about one particular flower over another?Von Frisch is able to answer these questions through very elegant experiments, and he writes well enough so that the book is quite readable. ... Read more