By: Lauren DiVito
Ingenium – Canada’s Museums of Science and Innovation
Decoding the Dance of the Honey Bee, in Real-Time
3 m
Oct 12, 2017
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Media
Honey bees
Since the deciphering of the honey bee ‘waggle’ in the 1920’s by Karl von Frisch, researchers have been measuring the dance-like form of communication that allows bees to convey direction and distance to a food source. While this observation process was initially manual and time-consuming – requiring humans, protractors, and stopwatches – techniques have evolved with technology. Recently, a team from the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at the Free University of Berlin, Germany have created a method using cameras and algorithms to automatically detect, decode, and map this communication in real-time with 90% accuracy. Their plan for the future is to create a more user-friendly, mobile version of the software for easier access and use by researchers.
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Decoding the Dance of the Honey Bee, in Real-Time
Lauren DiVito
Lauren is the Manager of the Digital Innovation Lab at Ingenium. She's passionate about user experience and accessible design and how they can improve museum experiences for all. A creative storyteller with a background in biomedical communications, Lauren also loves finding new ways to communicate and visualize science topics.
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