Development of honeybee waggle dance and its differences between recruits and scouts

The lifetime development of the waggle dance of fourteen honeybees was automatically recorded just after the imaginal molt using high-definition camera modules connected with a Raspberry Pi computer and numbered radio frequency identification tags fitted to the back of each bee. For most honeybees, waggle dance follow preceded the appearance of the first waggle dance from one week after the imaginal molt. The duration per trip increased just after waggle dance follow. Before the appearance of the first waggle dance, the honeybee repeatedly follows waggle dances that indicate a limited number of food source locations. We discriminated between two types of foragers with different roles, recruits and novice scouts, by comparing the vectors indicated by the first waggle dance with dances they had previously followed. Of fourteen tagged honeybees, eleven were categorized as recruits and two as novice scouts. For recruits, the duration per trip increased significantly after waggle dances follow and substantially increased just before the appearance of the first waggle dance. Moreover, recruits increased the number of times they followed waggle dances indicating the same location, and their first waggle dance indicated this location. These results suggest that the differentiation of these two types of foragers is partly related to behavioral differences after waggle dance follows: whether trip is activated or not by follows a waggle dance.