The tremble dance was first described by Karl von Frisch in the 1920s (who was also first to describe the waggle dance), but no light was shed on its function until 1993 when Wolfgang Kirschner discovered that, when performed, the dance stopped nearby workers from flying to gather more nectar.
The tremble dance of the honeybee is similar to the waggle dance, but is used by a forager when the foraging bee perceives a long delay in unloading its nectar or a shortage of receiver bees, sometimes due to low numbers of receiver bees. It may also spread the scent released during the forager's waggle dance. Like the waggle dance, the tremble dance is likely one of two "primary regulation mechanisms" for regulating bee colony behavior at the group level, and one of four or five observed mechanisms known to be used by honeybees to change the task allocation among worker bees. The consumption of ethanol by foraging bees has been shown to increase the occurrence of the tremble dance while decreasing the occurrence of the waggle dance.
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*Arnold et al. (September 2002) Intra-Colonial Variability in the Dance Communication in Honeybees (Apis mellifera). Ethology Vol. 108, Issue 9. pp. 751–761.
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- Schneider, Stanley S.; Lee A. Lewis. (2003) Honey bee communication: the "tremble dance", the vibration signal and the "migration dance", in: Webster T. (Ed.) Monographs in honey bee biology. Northern Bee Books, West Yorks, Great Britain. Vol. 1, pp. 1–26.
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- Thom, Corinna. (2002) Dynamics and Communication Structures of Nectar Foraging in Honey bees (Apis mellifera). Dissertation zur Erlangung des naturwissenschaftlichen Doktorgrades der Bayerischen Julius-Maximilians -Universität Würzburg.