(and how a certain Wasp has taught us how to make paper!)
In the mid 1900’s, a scientist who spent many years studying bees, Karl Von Frisch, made an amazing discovery about honeybees. (In fact, for this discovery, in 1973 he ended up winning (sharing) a Nobel Prize for his fascinating work on honey bees.) Dr. Frisch discovered that honey bees have a special language that they “spoke” to each other that would communicate where they just discovered flowers that are available for more bees to visit for their nectar and pollen content. The bees would do a certain “waggle” dance which shows their fellow bees who are watching them, exactly where those flowers are! Even if they are miles away, they will be able to communicate its location quite accurately! A waggle is done by movement of their abdomen. The abdomen of the bee is quite flexible and it can be moved up and down, and to the right and the left. However, the main “waggle” is when it shakes its entire abdomen like someone who is shivering quite violently. Depending on its message, that’s the way it will move its entire body, by walking in certain directions, or by shaking its abdomen. So, there’s a whole complicated message being conveyed by the bee that their fellow bees must understand.
The abdomen of the bee (the lower part of the bee). (At the end of the abdomen is where the stinger is located.)
Dr. Frisch noticed that the bees were using their dance to point their fellow bees to the place of the flowers relative to the sun. Later, Dr. Frisch and others deciphered other parts of the bees dance language that gave the distance of how far away the flowers are. The language of bees doesn’t involve an alphabet or words and it was little understood until recent years. His experiments clearly showed that the bees have an exact language that could convey the location of the flowers, in an accurate way, through these waggle dances. When a foraging bee (a bee looking for flowers) locates a source of pollen or nectar, she can communicate this information to other bees in the colony accurately as to what direction, and what distance it is away from the hive, and the kind of plants that are there (that’s done through its odor).
The language dance performed is done on the combs in relation to the sun. The angle between the sun, and the food source, and the hive determines the direction of the dance. A dance straight up on the center of the comb means to go directly towards the sun. When the food is located 80 degrees to the left of the sun, the dance points 80 degrees to the left, and the same is if it’s to the right the dance will point to the right. Amazingly, each waggle corresponds to a specific amount of distance. For instance, each waggle of one specie will be “saying” that it’s 30 meters away (one meter is few inches more than 3 feet). So, if it’s 90 meters away, it will waggle three times. (It’s interesting to note that many species have their own specific distance that its waggle represents. In one specie a waggle can mean 45 meters distance (per waggle) and in another specie it could mean 20 meters (per waggle).) With this method, it can accurately communicate the distance of patches of flowers even if it’s miles away!
Experiments have been done that prove that the bees do not “learn” any of this. Bees were taken away from their hive at birth, and then they were put back in their hive at their correct age when they would go out looking for flowers. They came back to their hive and they knew how to perform the correct dance, and they knew how to accurately interpret other bees’ dances, without ever having seen them performed before. So, it’s clearly instinctive that they know all this. When put with a different species, they will get the “messages” of their dances completely wrong if that species waggle indicates one distance which is different than the distance that their waggle dance conveys.
Now, let’s analyze this a bit. The first question we must ask is how do the bees actually know how far the patch of flowers is from the hive, so that they can communicate that distance? Do they have an odometer to calculate the distance travelled? Do they have a tape measure? So truthfully, scientists aren’t 100% sure. Nevertheless, experiments seem to indicate that the bees are able to tell how far they have flown from the effort that they need to expand for that particular distance of flight. That alone is quite amazing! Imagine that you want to know how far you have just jogged. Would you be able to figure it out from the how tired you were after the jog? I don’t think so, but bees can! How is it possible? In addition, since it has been determined that each waggle means a certain amount of distance, so lets think about this. The bee expanded a certain amount of effort travelling from the flower back to the hive. Lets say it figures out that he distance is 3000 meters. So, with 30 meters per waggle, IT JUST DOES THE MATH AND FIGURES OUT THAT IT NEEDS TO DO 100 WAGGLES! Excuse me? Are you telling me that the bee can do math? I gave an “easy” math example. What if it was 1,100 meters? The bee would need to divide 1,100 by 30 and come up with the answer that it needs to do exactly 37 waggles! No way! How in the world can the bee figure this out? In addition, how do all these bees know how to keep these calculations in their brain? Since they don’t write anything down, how can they hold the accurate calculations in their mind and then convey those calculations to their fellow bees? This indicates some form of memory in the bees! Ok, so that tells us how they know how far the flowers are from the hive, but how do they know how to figure out how many degrees off the flowers are, in comparison to the sun? For them to communicate how much to the right or the left of the sun the flowers are, they must UNDERSTAND the CONCEPT of using the sun as a “centerpiece/landmark” so to speak, from which to measure how many degrees the flowers are to the right or left of the sun. HOW IS IT POSSIBLE FOR THEM TO FIGURE OUT THESE MEASUREMENTS, WITHOUT ANY MEASURING TOOLS? They just look up into the sky and figure out how many degrees it is off to the left or right of the sun? Can YOU do that? In addition, THEY ALSO KNOW HOW TO FIGURE OUT WHERE THE SUN HAS MOVED TO (the sun keeps moving) and they can adjust their calculations with that KNOWLEDGE. Do YOU have that ability? Of course not, but the bee has that ability to make such moving calculations!!! It’s mind boggling! (If they were to be off by just a little with their calculations, that can throw off the measurements by many hundreds of meters and that wouldn’t work for the bees.) It’s all an IMMENSE MIRACLE of Hashem Who put all this knowledge and all these calculations into the tiny bee’s puny little brain! Can this be an accident? Can any honest person say it’s an accident? Of course not! So once again, we show how Hashem has filled His world with fantastic miracles all around us.
There’s another interesting thing to know about honey bees. Bees strive to keep their hive temperature at about 97 degrees Fahrenheit. For any hive to survive they need to know how to cool down the hive if it got too hot, otherwise they would dehydrate and completely die out. But, have no fear. If it gets much hotter than the 97 degrees, the bees have a “solution”. They will go and gather a lot of water. They will then lay the water down on any available surface in the hive and then they fan the water with their wings. This cools off the hive through evaporation, much like we feel cooled off when a breeze goes over our damp skin which causes evaporation. So, we need to ask two questions. WHO taught them this crucial survival mechanism how to cool off the hive? They would have needed to “know” this “trick” from day one, otherwise no hive would ever have survived. Secondly, HOW in the world do they know when the temperature reaches the desired 97 degrees Fahrenheit? Does it have a thermometer to measure the degrees in the hive? Then how does it know the temperature inside the hive? Here’s another example of the tremendous amount of knowledge and ability that Hashem has put into the puny little bee brain! Putting all the articles we have written about the honey bee together shows us the enormous abilities and “knowledge” that Hashem has to put into the honey bee for it to function properly. Of course, things are much, much, much more complicated than what we have written, but even the little we have written about shows us how great is Hashem’s abilities and how great is His wisdom!!
Finally, we will end with a different bee, which is actually a wasp. This wasp is from where we humans have learned how to make paper!!! Yes, paper! Guess what, they are called paper wasps! They make the paper from very small particles of wood which the wasp shaves off with their mandibles from trees, or wooden beams, or boards. Then they add their saliva to it and it forms a liquidly paste. While it’s still moist they form the hexagon cells and then it dries into a paper like material! Mankind learned to make paper from wooden fibers, and they have discovered a binding material (similar to the saliva of the wasp) that turns it into paper. What in the world gave the wasp this idea??? Hashem did!
There are many more interesting types of nests that bees and wasps make. Perhaps we will write an article at a later date about them, but for now, BE”H, I will be moving on to the fascinating spider!
Paper nest made by the paper wasp.
About the Author
Rabbi Samuel Waldman is a highly respected educator and Torah scholar, with over 50 years dedicated to the study and teaching of Judaism. His formative years were spent at the esteemed Mirrer Yeshiva, where he developed a strong foundation in Torah learning. Influenced by the profound teachings of Rabbi Avigdor Miller ZTL and guided by his close association with Rav Don Segal, shlit”a, Rabbi Waldman has become a leading voice in Jewish education and thought.
As Mashgiach of Yeshiva Mercaz Hatorah of Belle Harbor, Rabbi Waldman provided spiritual guidance and mentorship to generations of students. His book, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt: Convincing Evidence to the Truths of Judaism, published in 2002, remains a cornerstone in the world of kiruv. This widely acclaimed work has sold tens of thousands of copies, offering readers a clear and compelling understanding of Judaism’s core beliefs.
Rabbi Waldman has also shared his knowledge as a teacher at Yeshiva Tiferes Moshe and inspired countless students through his involvement in Jewish summer camps. Currently, he is focused on writing an in-depth Sefer on the transformative power of prayer, emphasizing its importance in daily life. He has also expanded his educational efforts through a blog and YouTube channel, where he addresses topics like Intelligent Design and critiques the Theory of Evolution.
Rabbi Shmuel Waldman’s lifelong dedication to teaching and inspiring others has left an indelible mark on the Jewish community, enriching the lives of students and readers worldwide. His work continues to guide individuals on their spiritual journeys and deepen their connection to Judaism.