The waggle dance is famous, but most of a honeybee colony's second-to-second coordination runs on quieter, substrate-borne signals that spread across the comb itself. This lab lets you trigger four of them on a patch of comb and watch how nearby workers react.
The stop signal was once called the "begging signal" because researchers first saw it used to beg for food; only later work by James Nieh and others showed its main job is inhibiting risky recruitment dances.
A 3D patch of honeybee comb where you can trigger the tremble dance, stop signal, vibration signal (DVAV) or queen piping and watch the pulse of vibration ripple outward, exciting nearby workers.
Each signal is modelled as a repeating vibration pulse spreading from a sender bee across the comb; workers within reach of an active pulse become excited and reposition, mirroring how real signals recruit receivers, freeze dancers or activate the colony.
Pick a signal from the dropdown, then adjust pulse tempo and colony arousal to see more or fewer workers react. Switch to piping to see a virgin queen toot while rival queens still in their cells answer with quacks.
The stop signal, tremble dance, DVAV and piping were all discovered decades after the waggle dance — some, like the stop signal's true function, were only confirmed in the 2000s.