The Waggle Dance

by Zachary Swezy

“The waggle dance is unique in a notable way. Here we have a signal that is constructed from a ritualized and miniaturized imitation of the journey that the signaler has taken in the past and upon which some of her sisters are about to embark.”

-Dr. E.O. Wilson

I

During times of peace, the grey-eyed and wise Pallas Athena alighted from her station on Mount Olympus to walk through the forests. In nature she sought opportunities for scholastic experimentation. On one excursion she was struck by a bee in passing. For a long time, she inspected the nest from which the insect emerged and was impressed with their architectural prowess and rudimentary grasp of language. For the sake of science, Athena chose one lady within the hive to instill with wisdom, bravery, dreams and despair. The Goddess walked on. Her thoughts drifting bloodily back to The War of the Giants.

II

The magic of Athena entered the creature in her slumber. Through the cover of dreams, she was transported to Delphi, where an acolyte of Apollo foresaw great potential for the bee. She prophesied that the young worker would usher in a new way. This thought delighted the bee to the point of distress. There was no pheromone at her disposal that could express the acute unease. Oftentimes, she felt both uneasy and unable to express this feeling to her brood sisters. In their youth they tended to the new births together as a family, but as their duties shifted from infant care to food gathering, their relationship with our heroine shifted as well. She was set apart by the vibrancy of her waggle. Her dance was precise and fruitful, always leading the hive to a bounty of pollen. Her sisters were kind to ignore the esoteric and inscrutable messages embedded in her dances, which did not affect the outcome of their hunts.

III

On her scouting missions, our protagonist felt free from the prescriptive eyes of her kin. These search expeditions provided her clarity and peaceful solitude, until one morning in the heat of summer.

She was ensconced in a sea of ocheroid cosmos. In her delight, she surprised herself by waggling left in elation. This was the first time she had transgressed the traditional use of the dance. None of her hive-mates had ever waggled to express anything other than direction. The protagonist recognized her action as uniquely self-centered. Unconsciously, she waggled right in despair, creating a new binary.

IV

Through experimentation the bee learned that expression of her distress could be given degree through the use of angles. Acute feelings could be expressed with low angles while the strongest feelings would require nearly a right angle. She decided left would be used to express calm joy, like the feeling she found in her travels.

Upon inspection, she was able to find binaries in the flowers themselves. They had valves that were open or closed, scents that were inviting or discouraging with lots of room for ambiguity in-between. Her world gained subtlety.

Like all of the women of her colony, she was an assiduous worker. She felt enlivened by the new task of describing the world and she diligently applied herself to the good work. Adjustments were made to the binary waggle through the pairing of well-timed pheromone releases. This is how she created emergent patterns.

V

Using the patterns she crafted, our bee began to formulate a system of signs. The sign for “snapdragon foxglove” could be understood as a northeasterly waggle coupled with a small secretion from the tarsal gland. It would be useful for her sisters to understand what flora they were seeking out. She had worked out countless symbols for different flowers. She was always thinking of the hive.

During the time it took for the moon to wax from new to full, the blessed creature was able to compile a lattice of waggles and pheromones to differentiate between various threats such as: bears, birds, and insects. Her waking life was consumed by her scholastic endeavors but once the sun went down strange images of tragedy encumbered her thoughts.

In the dark, a new scene from Tauris flooded her slumber. In this spectacle the famed Iphigenia is seen waggling. She is being held captive by the Taurians.

“…no marriage, no children, no city, no loved ones. I no longer sing songs for Hera at Argos, nor weave Athenas and Titans to the hum of the loom,” said Iphigenia. The bee felt kinship with the heroine of her dreams. She felt captive herself. Another dream involved the heroine’s brother, Orestes, who the bee admired for his willingness to act. These dreams persisted for a quarter of a moon cycle, ensavaging her.

Eventually she was ready to unveil her new system, which she considered semiotically sound. The bee requested the audience of her Queen which was promptly granted. For some time, Her Majesty sat befuddled and amused as our heroine demonstrated her complex codes. She chose to start simply, explaining the idea of a “binary” using pollen as an example. This information piqued the interest of the Queen early on. But, as the presenter began to expound on the different names for plants and predators, the Queen’s patience began to wane, the information itself was hard to parse. The excessive waggling and preponderance of alarming pheromones began to stifle the air. Just as our heroine was outlining the different symbols for favored flowers, her Queen had reached the limit.

A number of workers in the audience smelled the Queen’s irritation and began to leave the chamber hall. Our protagonist was saddened by the enthusiasm the brood failed to muster for her new system. After this event she was treated with outright hostility by a number of her hivemates.

VI

The hectoring died down as the colony began preparations for its fifth and largest birthing cycle yet. In the sunlight, the bee indulged herself in mindless labor, to the point of exhaustion, but this could not keep the image of Orestes away. Her sleep was despoiled by thoughts of tragedy and matricide.

While she waggled at eighty-nine degrees to the right, it occurred to our protagonist that her systems of communication would likely die with her. To see her lustral thoughts to fruition she needed to act against the queen who did not heed her lessons.

Formulating and executing her new plan proved easier than she anticipated. Given the regimented schedule of the hive, it was natural for her to predict the movements of her brood sisters. She was able to steal away at times in order to quietly make cerumen, of which her plan demanded a large amount. What quantity she couldn’t create herself was stolen from low pillars in the hive. She transformed the cerumen into small vessels.

Each darkness after, the bee would fill her cerumen pots with royal jelly which she would then transport to her secret place nestled in the yellow cosmos. She snuck into the chambers of the virgin queens, ate their jelly, and replaced it with pollen. They would not grow into queens nor would they die. She stored this leftover liquid at the site of her future home in the stars.

VII

A dreamless darkness came and she left the brood for good. She left only a fertility signal strong enough for a libidinous male to follow.

Among the ochre flowers to which she had absconded, our heroine feasted on her store of royal jelly, repurposed the empty vessels into new hive components, and worked to make her system of communication more robust and legible. In her leisure she waggled the first sonnets. She waited as her ovaries grew and wings shrank. It was so silent in the beginning, she missed the hum of the brood.

She knew that after her transformation she would no longer be able to take her solitary flights or discover new pollen sources. All alone, she waggled high and to the right. Though her wings looked moth-eaten she used them to hurdle herself into the sky to gaze upon the beauty of her surroundings. While on her final flight she witnessed a male nearing her. In her larger field of vision she saw a great deal of drones flying aimlessly as if rendered useless by the lack of virgin queens born at her old hive precipitated by the famine of royal jelly.

The errant male made his way through the yellow flora towards our protagonist and was welcomed into her swarm. They swarmed twelve times. When the light looked golden, the sun shone through the tree tops all the way down through the undergrowth. By the end of their coitus, her ovaries contained enough seed to last a lifetime and the man was gladly dead.

Using the last of the force contained in her haggard wings she flew home. While her brood grew inside of her, she composed sonnets for the males who died. She slept soundly when it became dark. Her dreams centered around the new language, coven, and hive. With gentle assurance, she tended to her small brood. She tried to fend off her greatest fear, stagnation, the possibility that nothing would change. As a mother she became hopeful.

______

Zachary Swezy

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