science

Tremble dance

Tremble dance is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Tremble dance rather than just read about it. In short: A tremble dance is a dance performed by forager honey bees of the species Apis mellifera to recruit more receiver honey bees to collect the nectar that the workers have brought back to the hive. When a bee performs the dance, she shakes her body, spins, and walks, all at the same time.

Key takeaways

Tremble dance belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Tremble dance to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Tremble dance from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

A tremble dance is a dance performed by forager honey bees of the species Apis mellifera to recruit more receiver honey bees to collect the nectar that the workers have brought back to the hive. When a bee performs the dance, she shakes her body, spins, and walks, all at the same time. This can sometimes last half an hour.

History of discovery The tremble dance was first described by Karl von Frisch in the 1920s (who was also first to describe the waggle dance), but no light was shed on its function until 1993 when Wolfgang Kirschner discovered that, when performed, the dance stopped nearby workers from flying to gather more nectar.

Function The tremble dance of the honeybee is used by a forager when it perceives a long delay in unloading its nectar or a shortage of receiver bees, indicating a need to switch worker allocation from foragers to receivers. It may also spread the scent released during the forager's waggle dance. The waggle and tremble dances are likely the two "primary regulation mechanisms" for controlling group behavior in the bee colony, and one of four or five observed mechanisms known to be used by honeybees to change the task allocation among worker bees.

Linkage to ethanol consumption The consumption of ethanol by foraging bees has been shown to increase the occurrence of the tremble dance while decreasing the occurrence of the waggle dance.

See also Bee learning and communication Bee piping Eusociality Grooming dance Waggle dance

References

Sources and further reading Arnold et al. (September 2002) Intra-Colonial Variability in the Dance Communication in Honeybees (Apis mellifera). Ethology Vol. 108, Issue 9. pp. 751–761. Biesmeijer, J. C. (May 2003) The occurrence and context of tremble dancing in free-foraging honey bees (Apis mellifera). Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. Volume 53, Number 6. pp. 411–416. Dyer, Fred C. (January 2002) The biology of the dance language. Annual Review of Entomology. Vol. 47. pp. 917–949. Schneider, Stanley S.; Lee A. Lewis. (2003) Honey bee communication: the "tremble dance", the vibration signal and the "migration dance", in: Webster T. (Ed.) Monographs in honey bee biology. Northern Bee Books, West Yorks, Great Britain. Vol. 1, pp. 1–26. Schneider, Stanley S.; Lee A. Lewis. (March 2004) The vibration signal, modulatory communication and the organization of labor in honey bees, Apis mellifera. Apidologie. Vol. 35, Issue 2. pp. 117–131. Archived 2007-07-12 at the Wayback Machine Seeley, Thomas D. (July 1997) Honey Bee Colonies are Group-Level Adaptive Units. The American Naturalist. Vol. 150, Supplement: Multilevel Selection. pp. S22-S41. Seeley, Thomas D. (June 1999) Born to Dance. Natural History. Vol. 108, Number 6. pp. 54–57. Takeshi, Otani. (2001) Dance performance at very near distance from the honeybee hive. Honeybee Science. Vol. 22, Number 3. pp. 127–138. Thom, Corinna. (2002) Dynamics and Communication Structures of Nectar Foraging in Honey bees (Apis mellifera). Dissertation zur Erlangung des naturwissenschaftlichen Doktorgrades der Bayerischen Julius-Maximilians -Universität Würzburg.

External links Honey bee tremble dance on YouTube

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Tremble dance

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Tremble dance claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Tremble dance before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Tremble dance ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Tremble dance

In research: Tremble dance appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Tremble dance in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Tremble dance is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Western honey bee behavior, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Tremble dance outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Tremble dance in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Tremble dance means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Tremble dance out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Tremble dance in simple terms?

Why does Tremble dance matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Tremble dance?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Tremble dance.