The Honeybee That Gives Directions by Dancing

A honeybee flies out from the hive, finds a patch of flowers, drinks its fill and comes home. Now it has a problem. It knows where the food is. The other thousands of bees do not. And bees cannot point.

So the bee dances

Back inside the dark hive, the returning bee walks a small figure-of-eight on the honeycomb. Down the middle of the eight it shakes its body from side to side. Biologists call this the waggle dance, and it carries two separate pieces of information at the same time.

• The direction: the angle of the waggling run, measured against straight up, is the angle the other bees must fly, measured against the direction of the Sun.
• The distance: the longer the waggle lasts, the further away the flowers are.

Other bees crowd around, feel the vibrations in the dark, and fly out on that heading. It is a set of directions given by movement instead of words.