Honey bee waggle dance calibration
In collaboration with Margaret Jane Couvillon's team (also VT Entomology), we are conducting a calibration study of the waggle dance to the local environment.
Calibrating the waggle dance involves training bees to feed from artificial syrup feeders and then filming their recruitment dances when they advertise this food source inside an observation hive. From the videos we can analyze the straight waggle runs, the portion of the dance that encodes the vector to the food source. In particular, we can then set the true feeder location in relation to the distance indicated by the duration of this waggle run, and the direction to the direction indicated by the angle from vertical on the wax comb.
The calibration can then be used to estimate where bees have foraged by just observing there dances which is a goal of Dr. Couvillon's work.
The calibration project started in mid-July of 2017 and ended in 2019