2023100th Anniversary of the Publication of The Language of Bees - Miniature Sheet

100 years ago, the Austrian zoologist and behavioural scientist Karl von Frisch successfully decoded the "language" of bees.

Even Aristotle had described the dance of bees but was unable to make sense of it. Karl von Frisch (1886-1982) conducted extensive experiments on bee communication. In his work "On the ‘language’ of bees. An investigation of animal psychology", he explained the results of his research: he found that bees use dances in the hive to indicate food sources.

A simple round dance indicates that a food source is located near the hive. In the more elaborate waggle dance, bees also share additional information about the location, distance, and yield of the food source. Karl von Frisch was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1973 for his research.