Q. How Did the Bee Dance EVOLVE?
A. “And we also don’t know how it evolved” is how a fascinating little report on bee dancing ends (“Decoding Bees’ Wild Waggle Dances,” www.Wired.com). By radar-tracking bees a team of British scientists has proved that bees use their little dances to communicate the source of food to each other, as has been long suspected.
The report says that, after finding food, scout bees returning to the hive dance on the vertical walls of the honeycomb. A round dance indicates the food is very close, within 35 yards or less. A figure-eight pattern indicates that the food is farther away. The bee indicates the distance to the food by how long it dances; it indicates the food’s richness by how vigorously it dances; and it indicates the food’s direction by the angle the dance deviates from an imaginary line drawn from the current position of the sun to the dance floor. The code is complex and detailed.
Evolve that? You must be kidding! God taught the bees to do those dances, and they haven’t evolved one new step since Adam’s day.