Von Frisch's bee study

Question 1

what did Frisch aim to do

Answer 1

to describe dances performed by bees and how they used that to communicate

Question 2

what method did Frisch use

Answer 2

• he studied bees in their habitat
• he changed aspects of their environment to see how that affected behaviour
• he would change the feeding source distance
• he made 6000 observations in 12 years

Question 3

what were the results

Answer 3

bees communicated the location of the food using 2 dances

• the round dance was used when food was less than 100m way and bees would fly around to find it
• the waggle dance was used when food was further, the dance contained messages about the source of the food, they moved in a figure 8 and wiggled in the direction of the pollen changing speed depending on distance of pollen

Question 4

what conclusion was made

Answer 4

bees use a specific form of communication, the speed at which other bees found food determined how valuable the information they received was

Question 5

what is a strength of this study

PEE

Answer 5

p- One strength is that it made an important contribution to the research and science into animal communication and behaviour

e-his work was work that was collected over many years. people knew bees danced but didn’t know how they communicated or the fact that this message conveyed meaning

e- this shows that this study is important and made lots of contribution to the understanding of animal behaviour

Question 6

what is a weakness of this study

PEE

Answer 6

p- One weakness of this study is that it doesn’t take sound into account as a factor

e- a study found that bees would not go looking for the food source if it was done in silence, worker bees would made sounds during the dance, we can’t be sure that the sound didn’t also contain messages to the location of the food

e- this is important as it shows that the study didn’t take all factors into consideration