What do you think?
Rate this book
The Dancing Bees: Karl von Frisch and the Discovery of the Honeybee Language
We think of bees as being among the busiest workers in the garden, admiring them for their productivity. But amid their buzzing, they are also great communicators—and unusual dancers. As Karl von Frisch (1886–1982) discovered during World War II, bees communicate the location of food sources to each other through complex circle and waggle dances. For centuries, beekeepers had observed these curious movements in hives, and others had speculated about the possibility of a bee language used to manage the work of the hive. But it took von Frisch to determine that the bees’ dances communicated precise information about the distance and direction of food sources. As Tania Munz shows in this exploration of von Frisch’s life and research, this important discovery came amid the tense circumstances of the Third Reich.
The Dancing Bees draws on previously unexplored archival sources in order to reveal von Frisch’s full story, including how the Nazi government in 1940 determined that he was one-quarter Jewish, revoked his teaching privileges, and sought to prevent him from working altogether until circumstances intervened. In the 1940s, bee populations throughout Europe were facing the devastating effects of a plague (just as they are today), and because the bees were essential to the pollination of crops, von Frisch’s research was deemed critical to maintaining the food supply of a nation at war. The bees, as von Frisch put it years later, saved his life. Munz not only explores von Frisch’s complicated career in the Third Reich, she looks closely at the legacy of his work and the later debates about the significance of the bee language and the science of animal communication.
This first in-depth biography of von Frisch paints a complex and nuanced portrait of a scientist at work under Nazi rule. The Dancing Bees will be welcomed by anyone seeking to better understand not only this chapter of the history of science but also the peculiar waggles of our garden visitors.
The Dancing Bees draws on previously unexplored archival sources in order to reveal von Frisch’s full story, including how the Nazi government in 1940 determined that he was one-quarter Jewish, revoked his teaching privileges, and sought to prevent him from working altogether until circumstances intervened. In the 1940s, bee populations throughout Europe were facing the devastating effects of a plague (just as they are today), and because the bees were essential to the pollination of crops, von Frisch’s research was deemed critical to maintaining the food supply of a nation at war. The bees, as von Frisch put it years later, saved his life. Munz not only explores von Frisch’s complicated career in the Third Reich, she looks closely at the legacy of his work and the later debates about the significance of the bee language and the science of animal communication.
This first in-depth biography of von Frisch paints a complex and nuanced portrait of a scientist at work under Nazi rule. The Dancing Bees will be welcomed by anyone seeking to better understand not only this chapter of the history of science but also the peculiar waggles of our garden visitors.
296 pages, Hardcover
First published May 7, 2016
29 people are currently reading
248 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 26, 2018
After searching in vain for an affordable copy of Karl von Frisch’s 1967 classic, The Dance Language and Orientation of Bees, which is one of several entomological books I’d hoped to read in the new year, I came across this new biography of von Frisch. I happily noted that it would provide a good overview of his research and also delve into an aspect of the Third Reich that my prior readings on WWII had scarcely touched – namely, how German scientists who stayed rather than fled were affected, both on personal and professional levels.
This account, then, is a curious amalgamation of science, history, biography, and politics. By focusing on one man and his research, the book provides an unusual kind of lens to focus on an era. Von Frisch was an especially interesting case as his research prospered even though he had been declared one-quarter Jewish by the Nazi regime in 1941. As such, his teaching privileges and research funding were subject to being withdrawn.
However, as the author shows, prior to this von Frisch had made a series of farsighted changes to his research focus, shifting to problems key to agricultural production. Von Frisch also was peculiarly well connected, and a number of prominent scientists lobbied on his behalf.
Yet ultimately it was the bees themselves that provided his deliverance. In 1941 a devastating outbreak of bee parasites caused the collapse of some 8000,000 bee colonies in Germany, thus threatening war-time food production. Von Frisch was one of the few men in the country who could help provide a solution.
Thus while the world crumbled around them, von Frisch and his team carried on, though they were soon forced to leave their laboratories and offices in bombed-out Munich to encamp in von Frisch’s family’s retreat in the idyllic Salzkammergut alpine region of Austria. There, among the pristine meadows and lakes, this colony of human worker bees industriously toiled at their research tasks. Most importantly, von Frisch, who had initially begun research on bee vision in 1914, resumed and enlarged these inquiries through a series of experiments that cumulatively led to his groundbreaking theory of bee communication.
For me the description of these experiments and the step-by-step reasoning behind them were perhaps the most absorbing part of the book. Briefly, von Frisch was able to communicate that through their “waggle dance” bees could communicate both the distance and the direction to food sources. I was fascinated by the cleverness of the methodology and the painstaking thoroughness of the experiments.
What emerges from this book most vividly is von Frisch’s extraordinary focus and ability to block out everything unrelated to his research. But, I admit, having spent a lifetime living among scientists (though not one of them myself), I wasn’t entirely surprised at von Frisch’s prolific wartime research output. It struck me as a coping mechanism as well as the result of intellectual curiosity.
The author, herself a scientist, refrains from conjecturing about many aspects of von Frisch’s life, in particular the guilt or misgivings he may have felt about continuing to work with the blessing, essentially, of the Nazis while elsewhere colleagues faced harsher treatment and even death. This “just the facts, ma’am” approach left me a bit dissatisfied, though I had to acknowledge to myself that it was quite in keeping with the subject at hand.
The author does spend quite a bit of time on another question, however, which was how and why von Frisch became an exemplar of a “good German” scientist after the war, enjoying an enhanced reputation and patronage in the U.S. That is, he was not seen as a collaborator but instead as someone who had labored heroically despite having been declared an enemy (a partial Jew).
While von Frisch certainly was not a collaborator with the Nazis in any meaningful way, I was left wondering if he was not ultimately hiding behind his research in some sense. Was there something he might have done to speak out or take a stand, or would this merely have been suicidal? The author never takes a position on this, but it’s hard not to sense a kind of judgement when she states, “It is difficult to shake the image of a scientist who escaped the horrors that surrounded him by burying himself in his work.”
So, from the horrors of war emerged an elegant and novel body of work, one which led to new ways of thinking about animal communication. Still, after reading this biography, I couldn’t quite get a handle on the man behind the research. There simply weren’t enough “data points in the set” pertaining to the personal rather than the professional aspects of von Frisch’s life.
Read this book for the "Reading Genres" book club "Eurobooks" meeting, for which I decided to concentrate on European entomologists. I read five books, all told, for this meeting, which was undoubtedly overkill, but which I wholeheartedly enjoyed.
This account, then, is a curious amalgamation of science, history, biography, and politics. By focusing on one man and his research, the book provides an unusual kind of lens to focus on an era. Von Frisch was an especially interesting case as his research prospered even though he had been declared one-quarter Jewish by the Nazi regime in 1941. As such, his teaching privileges and research funding were subject to being withdrawn.
However, as the author shows, prior to this von Frisch had made a series of farsighted changes to his research focus, shifting to problems key to agricultural production. Von Frisch also was peculiarly well connected, and a number of prominent scientists lobbied on his behalf.
Yet ultimately it was the bees themselves that provided his deliverance. In 1941 a devastating outbreak of bee parasites caused the collapse of some 8000,000 bee colonies in Germany, thus threatening war-time food production. Von Frisch was one of the few men in the country who could help provide a solution.
Thus while the world crumbled around them, von Frisch and his team carried on, though they were soon forced to leave their laboratories and offices in bombed-out Munich to encamp in von Frisch’s family’s retreat in the idyllic Salzkammergut alpine region of Austria. There, among the pristine meadows and lakes, this colony of human worker bees industriously toiled at their research tasks. Most importantly, von Frisch, who had initially begun research on bee vision in 1914, resumed and enlarged these inquiries through a series of experiments that cumulatively led to his groundbreaking theory of bee communication.
For me the description of these experiments and the step-by-step reasoning behind them were perhaps the most absorbing part of the book. Briefly, von Frisch was able to communicate that through their “waggle dance” bees could communicate both the distance and the direction to food sources. I was fascinated by the cleverness of the methodology and the painstaking thoroughness of the experiments.
What emerges from this book most vividly is von Frisch’s extraordinary focus and ability to block out everything unrelated to his research. But, I admit, having spent a lifetime living among scientists (though not one of them myself), I wasn’t entirely surprised at von Frisch’s prolific wartime research output. It struck me as a coping mechanism as well as the result of intellectual curiosity.
The author, herself a scientist, refrains from conjecturing about many aspects of von Frisch’s life, in particular the guilt or misgivings he may have felt about continuing to work with the blessing, essentially, of the Nazis while elsewhere colleagues faced harsher treatment and even death. This “just the facts, ma’am” approach left me a bit dissatisfied, though I had to acknowledge to myself that it was quite in keeping with the subject at hand.
The author does spend quite a bit of time on another question, however, which was how and why von Frisch became an exemplar of a “good German” scientist after the war, enjoying an enhanced reputation and patronage in the U.S. That is, he was not seen as a collaborator but instead as someone who had labored heroically despite having been declared an enemy (a partial Jew).
While von Frisch certainly was not a collaborator with the Nazis in any meaningful way, I was left wondering if he was not ultimately hiding behind his research in some sense. Was there something he might have done to speak out or take a stand, or would this merely have been suicidal? The author never takes a position on this, but it’s hard not to sense a kind of judgement when she states, “It is difficult to shake the image of a scientist who escaped the horrors that surrounded him by burying himself in his work.”
So, from the horrors of war emerged an elegant and novel body of work, one which led to new ways of thinking about animal communication. Still, after reading this biography, I couldn’t quite get a handle on the man behind the research. There simply weren’t enough “data points in the set” pertaining to the personal rather than the professional aspects of von Frisch’s life.
Read this book for the "Reading Genres" book club "Eurobooks" meeting, for which I decided to concentrate on European entomologists. I read five books, all told, for this meeting, which was undoubtedly overkill, but which I wholeheartedly enjoyed.
July 18, 2017
In his retirement, my father has begun keeping bees. Last year he had four or five hives, and if you let him he will talk to you for hours about the structure of the hive and the division of labor and the life cycle of the bees as he worked to naturally control the pests that threatened them. This year he is trying to go even more natural. He is not purchasing the domestic hives that seem less resilient to colony collapse disorder but instead is catching wild, native swarms. Learning along with him, I’ve come to realize how much of our agricultural system depends on the work these millions of bees do. I joke with my dad that he has a hundred thousand pets, though of course there is no way to keep them all straight as they fly in and out of the hives.
Yet that’s exactly what Karl von Frisch did in his studies to discover and understand how bees communicate with one another. Tania Munz’s study of the life and work of this Austrian naturalist is a surprisingly effective combination of my father’s hobby with my scholarly field of the history of science. Munz offers an accessible and somehow universalizing account of an individual who may not be well known to the wider public. Through an exploration of his career and influence, Munz explores not only the skill of a naturalist and the theoretical questions of communication among animals but also what life as a scientist was like in Germany during the Second World War.
Karl von Frisch discovered the “dance” of bees at their hive to communicate food finds with other bees. This might seem like an esoteric and rather minor discovery, but it had huge implications for the study of animal communication and the debate as to whether animals could actually think or simply acted on impulse and instinct. But Munz’s work and his directorship of a laboratory in Munich were threatened with the rise of the Nazis when it became known that he had Jewish great-grandparents on his mother’s side. One of the most fascinating aspect of Munz’s story is the narrative of von Frisch and his allies navigating the dangerous and complex Nazi bureaucracy to try to save his work and career. Ultimately, Frisch’s work was declared vital to the Reich, and Frisch began studying a parasite that was decimating bee colonies and threatening German agriculture.
Munz has done a fantastic job of interweaving the personal and political with the scientific. In the midst of her narrative she provides a series of “Bee Vignettes” illustrating different aspects of life in the hive and the history of apiary science. Just as fascinating as the portrayal of the rise of Nazi power and the war’s effect on working scientists like Frisch, Munz outlines the careful experiments Frisch performed to discover and then confirm the bee’s form of communication and how Frisch communicated this proof to other observers. The work is a powerful account of how field work is done, made even more compelling by not ignoring the things that were happening in the background. After the war, Munz explores how Frisch’s unique position (as a one-quarter Jew persecuted by the Nazis though still allowed to continue his work) helped him repair scientific relationships between Germany and other countries, particularly the United States.
For me though, Munz’s work was less important for the story it told than as an example of how to tell the story. The work balanced careful treatment of the science with understanding of the context in which it was done and returned a figure who might otherwise be obscure to a primary role in the development of theories of animal intelligence. My only regret was that while it did all this with an eye to Frisch’s personality and life, it was less biographical than one might have hoped. We learn about the beginning of Frisch’s career and his childhood, but we’re left with only a sketch of his final days, and though we’re told his wife struggled with depression we never get a complete domestic view. Though the world outside his lab affected his work and is handled deftly in Munz’s treatment, the domestic sphere was certainly just as important and was treated much more superficially.
Yet that’s exactly what Karl von Frisch did in his studies to discover and understand how bees communicate with one another. Tania Munz’s study of the life and work of this Austrian naturalist is a surprisingly effective combination of my father’s hobby with my scholarly field of the history of science. Munz offers an accessible and somehow universalizing account of an individual who may not be well known to the wider public. Through an exploration of his career and influence, Munz explores not only the skill of a naturalist and the theoretical questions of communication among animals but also what life as a scientist was like in Germany during the Second World War.
Karl von Frisch discovered the “dance” of bees at their hive to communicate food finds with other bees. This might seem like an esoteric and rather minor discovery, but it had huge implications for the study of animal communication and the debate as to whether animals could actually think or simply acted on impulse and instinct. But Munz’s work and his directorship of a laboratory in Munich were threatened with the rise of the Nazis when it became known that he had Jewish great-grandparents on his mother’s side. One of the most fascinating aspect of Munz’s story is the narrative of von Frisch and his allies navigating the dangerous and complex Nazi bureaucracy to try to save his work and career. Ultimately, Frisch’s work was declared vital to the Reich, and Frisch began studying a parasite that was decimating bee colonies and threatening German agriculture.
Munz has done a fantastic job of interweaving the personal and political with the scientific. In the midst of her narrative she provides a series of “Bee Vignettes” illustrating different aspects of life in the hive and the history of apiary science. Just as fascinating as the portrayal of the rise of Nazi power and the war’s effect on working scientists like Frisch, Munz outlines the careful experiments Frisch performed to discover and then confirm the bee’s form of communication and how Frisch communicated this proof to other observers. The work is a powerful account of how field work is done, made even more compelling by not ignoring the things that were happening in the background. After the war, Munz explores how Frisch’s unique position (as a one-quarter Jew persecuted by the Nazis though still allowed to continue his work) helped him repair scientific relationships between Germany and other countries, particularly the United States.
For me though, Munz’s work was less important for the story it told than as an example of how to tell the story. The work balanced careful treatment of the science with understanding of the context in which it was done and returned a figure who might otherwise be obscure to a primary role in the development of theories of animal intelligence. My only regret was that while it did all this with an eye to Frisch’s personality and life, it was less biographical than one might have hoped. We learn about the beginning of Frisch’s career and his childhood, but we’re left with only a sketch of his final days, and though we’re told his wife struggled with depression we never get a complete domestic view. Though the world outside his lab affected his work and is handled deftly in Munz’s treatment, the domestic sphere was certainly just as important and was treated much more superficially.
October 23, 2019
I enjoyed this book and, as a novice bee enthusiast, it taught me many things! The subject material was approached quite academically, which is not entirely my style, but it does seem to tie in with Von Frisch’s own approach. The juxtaposition of his passionate research with the events and attitudes of the mid 20th century was intriguing, and I wish we had more insight into his perspectives on this, though Munz does her best to put the pieces together. If any take issue with Von Frisch due to his support from the Nazi government, they would do well to consider the context and his priorities, as Munz persuades the reader to do. History is never black and white, and I’m glad to know more about this fascinating scientist and his work.
March 8, 2019
Quick, before honeybees disappear in our arrogant smothering of nature with poisons! Travel back a century and more and immerse yourself in the life of Karl von Frisch-- a world of patient, fascinated study of how bees communicate. This is history of science at its best and most engaging!
February 27, 2017
Reading about the experiments was interesting, but the history portions were dry.
November 5, 2018
Honestly, it was kind of boring, I'm sorry to say, although it was well written, and a good story.
May 8, 2019
A bit heavy at times, but a very interesting and insightful book.
January 3, 2017
A really interesting book about early animal physiology experiments. The middle section of the book contains quite a bit about how he managed to dodge the Nazis, but most of the book focuses on his fascinating experiments to discover how bees communicate.
November 7, 2016
Bees bees bees.
June 4, 2019
The experiments were fascinating, but the history was drier than I expected.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews