Dan Bees have become the buzz word of our time, one of many things we have in common with the ancient world. Recent studies reported in Scientific American indicate that not only the dance, but sounds and smells, may have been used for communication. This comes as no surprise to the classicist. After all, Aristotle goes into great detail about bee-havior, including the modes of movement to and from food, and he describes the hive as a little polis, complete with king.
Ancient literature is aswarm with bee metaphors.
Glance through Liddell and Scott and you'll find references, compound words, lots of stuff. All this talk about nonverbal bee communication leads us to the solution of an ancient mystery. Tablets from the bronze age describe a species of bees that did not dance but flew in straight lines. Their death was not unnoticed. It lurks behind those lines in Greek literature about the necessity of speech in the city.