Honeybees use various criteria to select the site for performing the waggle dances on the comb

After returning to the hive, successful honeybee foragers dance on the surface of the comb, where they interact with dance followers. It has been shown that bees establish a specific site for their waggle dances that is likely marked with chemical signals. By recording the site where dances take place on the comb in a single-frame observation hive, we investigated the relative importance of three different criteria for the selection of the dance floor by bees, including the distance from the hive entrance, the cell filling, and the chemical marking by bees and found that all these criteria play a role, albeit their importance does not seem to be equal.