MORE than fifty years ago von Frisch demonstrated that foraging honey bees aroused the interest of potential recruits by means of a ‘dance’1. These experiments showed that the forager's body provides sufficient information about the odour of the food source to enable other bees to find that food in the field. In addition von Frisch demonstrated that foragers also leave odours at the food source which aid recruits in their searches1,2. Von Frisch later found that the dance also contains distance and direction information which the recruits seem able to use3,4.