Honeybees waggle found to be disturbed by gravity
(Phys.org) -- One of the really cool things about science is how the mundane can suddenly seem not just interesting, but truly fascinating. One great example of this is the bee hive, specifically the honeybee hive, where it appears that little of interest is going on when viewed as an outsider. But then, some people spend an enormous amount of time studying what goes on in such a hive, and then go on to explain it to others, and then just like that, the mundane, becomes exciting. One such researcher is Dr Margaret Couvillon, who along with her colleagues at the University of Sussex, have found, as they describe in their paper published in Biology Letters, that when forager bees return to the hive to report on their findings, by doing a little waggle dance, they tend to do a better job of it when prancing vertically versus horizontally.