Does the body orientation of waggle dance followers affect the accuracy of recruitment?

Abstract - The honey bee waggle dance is a cascade of behaviors used to advertise the availability of a resource, and communicate its location. Little is known, however, about the behaviors of dance follower bees that allow them to extract information from the dance. We test competing hypotheses that suggest that either follower bees must be located behind a dancer bee or to the side of a dancer bee to be able to extract information from the dance. We also test if behaviors relating to the time that a follower bee spends following a dance are important in collecting dance information. We find that the bees are equally efficient finding a resource indicated by the dance after following a dance from the side or behind a dancer bee. We also find that the number of waggle runs followed has a significant effect on the accuracy of a foraging flight.