In the daytime, honeybee scouts fly around looking for nectar. When a scout finds a good patch of flowers, it goes back to its hive to tell the other worker bees.

If the flowers are less than 200 feet away, the scout dances around in a circle. This tells other bees there is food nearby, and they fly out to look for the flowers.

If the scout finds a flower patch a long way from the hive, it sips some nectar from a flower before it flies back. Other bees can smell the flowers on the scout's body. Sometimes the scout will give them a taste of the nectar too. Then the scout does the waggle dance, and the other bees crowd around. The waggle dance tells them how far away the food is and the direction they should fly in to find it.

When the scout does the waggle dance, it walks in a straight line. Then it turns and loops back to where it started. It does this again, walking along the line but looping back in the other direction. It dances like this, in a figure eight, over and over again.

When it walks along the straight line, the bee waggles its tail back and forth and makes a buzzing sound. The straight line tells the other bees the way to the food. The number of waggles tells them how far away the food is.