Home▸Animals & Their World▸The Landmark Studies That Taught Us How Honey Bees Think and Work

🐝 The Landmark Studies That Taught Us How Honey Bees Think and Work

An interactive 3D lab replaying two of the landmark experiments in honey bee science: von Frisch's waggle-dance decoding and Seeley's nest-site quorum-sensing swarm decisions.

Animals & Their World3DAdvanced60 FPS

A 3D lab replaying two of the most influential experiments in honey bee science: von Frisch's decoding of the waggle dance, and Seeley's discovery of quorum-sensing nest-site selection in swarms.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

In waggle-dance mode, the run's tilt from vertical equals the angle between food and sun, and its duration encodes distance. In quorum mode, scouts recruit more visitors to better sites, and the whole swarm relocates once one site reaches a quorum of simultaneous scouts.

🎮 How to Use

Pick an experiment from the dropdown. In waggle-dance mode, adjust food angle, distance and sun azimuth. In quorum mode, set the quorum threshold and scouting speed, then watch competing sites accumulate votes until one wins.

💡 Did You Know?

Karl von Frisch won the 1973 Nobel Prize for the waggle dance; decades later, Thomas Seeley's quorum-sensing model for swarm nest-site choice became a landmark case study in collective decision-making, cited far beyond entomology.

⚙ Under the hood

An interactive 3D lab replaying two of the landmark experiments in honey bee science: von Frisch's waggle-dance decoding and Seeley's nest-site quorum-sensing swarm decisions.

beeshoneybehaviorswarmscienceexperimentThree.js

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install