How Bees Talk (2D): Waggle-Dance Angle & Duration Decoder

Patch A (amber, near)

Nectar quality 55%

Patch B (violet, far)

Nectar quality 55%

Colony decision

Recruitment sensitivity 4

⚖️ Flight-cost penalty

Workforce allocation

Patch A share

50%

Patch B share

50%

A waggle run

—

B waggle run

—

Recruited so far

FPS

—

How it works

The left panel is the vertical comb inside the dark hive: a scout's waggle run transposes the sun's compass bearing onto gravity, so the angle from "straight up" on the comb encodes direction, and the run's duration encodes distance (≈75 ms per 100 m of real flight). The right panel is the field outside, drawn top-down from the hive entrance, showing where those bearings and distances actually point.

Dance vigour — how many followers a circuit recruits — scales with net attractiveness: quality discounted by flight cost when the penalty is on, attr = max(quality / (1 + distance/700), 0.5).
Workforce allocation follows a softmax quorum model: vigor_A = e^(k·attr_A) / (e^(k·attr_A) + e^(k·attr_B)), where k = sensitivity × 0.06, and the allocation bar drifts toward that vigour split rather than switching instantly.
Patch A sits at bearing 35°, 300 m; Patch B at bearing −55°, 950 m — the same fixed geometry as the 3D version, so the two are directly comparable.

Patch A — near, amber Patch B — far, violet

🐝 How Bees Talk (2D): Waggle-Dance Angle & Duration Decoder

🔬 What It Demonstrates

🎮 How to Use

💡 Did You Know?