2724) The "Dancing Language of the Bees, Republic of Austria (Osterreich Republik): "Easter Coins - Coin Series": The Austrian Mint, Vienna (AMV) has brought out a 5 Euro Coin in Silver and Copper depicting the dancing bees: Date/Year of Coin issue: 08.02.2023:
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I had read about Sherlock Holmes code language in the mystery titled "The Dancing Men", but never thought that extensive research has been conducted on the "Dancing language of the Bees".
In other words - "Why talk when you can dance instead"?
That’s how bees communicate. Their "waggle dance" is a wonderful phenomenon and one that not only bees themselves benefit from.
Other living creatures, including humans, do so too, because bees are a vital part of our ecosystem: their welfare is our welfare.
In the early 20th century, the unusual behaviour of honeybees piqued the curiosity of behavioural scientist Karl von Frisch (1886–1982), who was a German-Austrian ethologist. He received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1973, along with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz.
Frisch studied aspects of animal behaviour, including animal navigation, in the Carniolan honey bee (Apis mellifera carnica), a subspecies of the European honeybee.
His work centered on investigations of the sensory perceptions of the honeybee and he was one of the first to translate the meaning of the waggle dance.
His theory, described in his 1927 book "Aus dem Leben der Bienen" (translated into English as "The Dancing Bees"), was disputed by other scientists and greeted with skepticism at the time. Only much later was it shown to be an accurate theoretical analysis.
He was intrigued by the way the insects sometimes move in circles and perform a figure of-eight "waggle dance".
In time, von Frisch discovered that when doing so, bees are in fact "speaking" a dance language to the other members of their hive to show them where they can find pollen and nectar.
Dances as language:
Knowledge about feeding places can be relayed from bee to bee. The means of communication is a special dance of which there are two forms:
Round Dance:
The "round dance" provides the information that there is a feeding place in the vicinity of the beehive at a distance between 50 and 100 meters, without the particular direction being given.
By means of close contact among the bees it also supplies information about the type of food (blossom scent).
The foraging bee ... begins to perform a kind of "round dance".
On the part of the comb where she is sitting she starts whirling around in a narrow circle, constantly changing her direction, turning now right, now left, dancing clockwise and anti-clockwise, in quick succession, describing between one and two circles in each direction.
This dance is performed among the thickest bustle of the hive.
What makes it so particularly striking and attractive is the way it infects the surrounding bees; those sitting next to the dancer start tripping after her, always trying to keep their outstretched feelers on close contact with the tip of her abdomen. ... They take part in each of her manoeuvrings so that the dancer herself, in her mad wheeling movements, appears to carry behind her a perpetual comet's tail of bees.
Waggle Dance:
Interpretation of the waggle dance - direction relative to the sun is shown by angle to the vertical; distance by the time taken on the central stretch.
The "Waggle Dance" is used to relay information about more distant food sources.
In order to do this, the dancing bee moves forward a certain distance on the vertically hanging honeycomb in the hive, then traces a half circle to return to her starting point, whereupon the dance begins again.
On the straight stretch, the bee "waggles" with her posterior.
The direction of the straight stretch contains the information about the direction of the food source, the angle between the straight stretch and the vertical being precisely the angle which the direction of flight has to the position of the sun.
The distance to the food source is relayed by the time taken to traverse the straight stretch, one second indicating a distance of approximately one kilometer (so the speed of the dance is inversely related to the actual distance).
The other bees take in the information by keeping in close contact with the dancing bee and reconstructing its movements.
They also receive information via their sense of smell about what is to be found at the food source (type of food, pollen, propolis, water) as well as its specific characteristics.
The orientation functions so well that the bees can find a food source with the help of the waggle dance even if there are hindrances they must detour around like an intervening mountain.
The ‘round dance’, in which bees walks in a circle, turn around, then walk the same circle in the opposite direction, tells watching bees that there are flowers with pollen in the immediate vicinity of the hive.
When the food source is further away, the waggle dance tells the watching bees how far it is and in which direction they can find it.
The Coin:
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On the Reverses of the 5 Euro Silver and Copper Coins, a representation of the waggle dance is shown in the background behind a bee in flight and above a decorative honeycomb design.
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On the Obverses of the 5 Euro Silver and Copper Coins, which are nine-sided in design are seen the Coats of Arms of all the provinces of Austria.
The peripheral inscriptions read - "REPUBLIK OSTERREICH. EURO".
The specifications of the two Coin Variants are:
i) Silver Coin Variant:
Country: Republic of Austria (Osterreich Republik); Date/Year of Coin issue: 08.03.2023; Coin Denomination: 5 Euro; Coin Series Theme: "Easter Coins"; Coin Theme: "The Dancing Language of the Bees"; Metal Composition: .925 Fineness Silver (Ag); Weight: (Fine Weight) 7.78 grams/0.25 oz; Total Weight: 8.41 grams; Diameter/Size: 28.50 mm; Coin Quality: Uncirculated (U), Special Uncirculated (SU); Mintage: Uncirculated - 200,000 pieces, Special Uncirculated - 50,000 pieces; Coin Designer(s): Mag. Helmut Andexlinger, Herbert Wähner, Rebecca Wilding.
- Packaging: Comes in a blister pack featuring information in German as well as being a sign of gratitude to that miracle of nature – the bee – this superb little set encapsulates exactly what bees do for us and what we can do for them in return.
i) Copper Coin Variant:
Country: Republic of Austria (Osterreich Republik); Date/Year of Coin issue: 08.03.2023; Coin Denomination: 5 Euro; Coin Series Theme: "Easter Coins"; Coin Theme: "The Dancing Language of the Bees"; Metal Composition: .999 Fineness Copper (Cu); Weight: (Fine Weight) 7.78 grams/0.25 oz; Total Weight: 8.90 grams; Diameter/Size: 28.50 mm; Coin Quality: Uncirculated (U); Mintage: Uncirculated - 200,000 pieces, Special Uncirculated - 50,000 pieces; Coin Designer(s): Mag. Helmut Andexlinger, Herbert Wähner, Rebecca Wilding.
Packaging: Comes without packaging.
Bees Box:
- In addition to a 250 g jar of delicious Liquid Gold organic honey, produced by the bee colony on the roof of the Münze Österreich building in Vienna, the set contains seeds of the type of flowers that attract bees, as well as compressed soil and a flowerpot in which to plant them.
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