The waggle dance of the honey bee is used to
recruit nest mates to a resource. Dancer bees, however, may
indicate many directions within a single dance bout; we
show that this scatter in honey bee dances is strongly
dependent on the sensory modality used to determine a
reference angle in the dance. Dances with a visual reference
are more precise than those with a gravity reference. This
finding undermines the idea that scatter is introduced into
dances, which the bees could perform more precisely, in
order to spread recruits out over resource patches. It also
calls into question reported interspecific differences that
had been interpreted as adaptations of the dance to different
habitats. Our results support a non-adaptive hypothesis: that
dance scatter results from sensory and performance constraints, rather than modulation of the scatter by the dancing
bee. However, an alternative adaptive hypothesis cannot be
ruled out.