Researchers have decoded the honeybee's dance to determine which types of land the insects prefer.

Honeybees do a 'waggle dance' (pictured) to tell their nestmates the best places to forage for nectar and pollen. Margaret Couvillon and her colleagues at the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK, observed foraging honeybees (Apis mellifera) from three colonies for two years. By analysing more than 5,000 waggle dances, the team found that the bees preferred tracts of land with greater stewardship, and a nature reserve with abundant wildflowers, to land sown with organic seed mixes and frequently mowed.

The authors suggest that bees could be used as indicators for improving environmental management.

Credit: Redmond Durrell/Alamy

Curr. Biol. http://doi.org/sv9 (2014)