Dancing Bees – Karl von Frisch and the Discovery of the Honeybee Language (Emersion: Emergent Village resources for communities of faith)

Good book but heavy going. Stick with it

A very interesting story but it goes into exhausting detail and gets very scientific at times. I enjoyed it but didn't love it.

I finally know the answer to a trivia question more of us should know the answer to: Karl von Frisch. Herr Professor von Frisch was the German scientist that described how the “dance” that bees do when they come back with news of a new nectar or pollen source conveys the location of the goodies. Amongst other things, of course. And while “The Dancing Bees” is of great interest to us, the rest of von Frisch’s story, both scientific and human, is worth knowing, too. In her new book, Tania Munz entertainingly but factually, clearly, and succinctly, tells us von Frisch’s story.Tania Munz, previously at Northwestern University and a fellow at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, and now the Vice President for Research and Scholarship at the Linda Hall Library in Kansas City, has written a welcome biography of von Frisch, bringing a hitherto poorly-known but very successful scientist out from the back of the dusty cupboard of mid-twentieth century history so that we might meet him and appreciate his work and life. Her biography of the German scientist is the first of serious depth in English, at the very least.Karl von Frisch was born into a successful family of German professionals and academics; his father was a noted surgeon, his mother’s family included lawyers, physicists, physicians and artists, nearly all of them holding university professorships, and the trend would continue with Karl and his brothers.Karl began his professional training with three years of medical school, but subsequently diverted onto the path of biology and behavioral science and neurology in animals, in spite of passing his exams with distinction. He left Vienna, where he had fallen in love with zoology under the training of his uncle, and moved to Munich, to work and study under Richard Hertwig at his Zoological Institute. Von Frisch had found the central work-love of his life, and although he worked his way up the academic ladder with a few years as a professor in other settings, Karl returned to Munich in 1925 to become director of the Zoological Institute. He remained there until the institute was destroyed in the Second World War, and continued his work in the same vein after the war after funding from America’s Rockefeller Institute (for the second time) gave von Frisch the opportunity to remain active and a leader in his field.He is now recognized, and rightly so, for his charming, rigorous, and brilliant work with honey bees, but von Frisch began by studying aquatic zoology, producing seminal works there before moving on to the creature that would come to occupy his attention more and more as time passed. Karl described how the sympathetic nervous system of some fish controlled coloration, and then proceeded to demonstrate that fish, in contradiction of the teaching of the era, did indeed perceive color, though not in precisely the same way humans do. After jousting with the older academics whose works he was supplanting, von Frisch had ably demonstrated the veracity of his findings. Then he set to work on bees. Bees, like all other invertebrates, were also assumed to be colorblind. Thanks to von Frisch, we know that they’re not. (We also know that honey bees don’t see red terribly well, either, being in essence color-blind to that portion of the spectrum.)Instead of continuing on with a description of the history and science that one learns so well, and so easily, from Munz’s enchanting work, I’ll encourage the reader to pick up the book and enjoy the tale from the woman who worked terribly hard to be able to present it to us so well. If color vision was controversial, communication between invertebrates—which is of course associated with language and intellect—was thought to be highly restricted to conditioning and the like. (Which reminds me—from Munz I learned that von Frisch was a classmate of one Herr Professor Konrad Lorenz. The man held his own with some great ones.)For those curious about the human side of the story, rest assured that the drama is no less in that production. When Hitler became chancellor in 1933, Germany quickly moved to assure that civil servants, including professors, should not be tainted by inappropriate genes. Though von Frisch had been born and raised as a Catholic, it came to light in the late thirties that he was one-eighth Jewish through a grandmother he barely knew. This very nearly derailed his professional career completely, and the story of how he avoided dismissal and ignominy is well-presented by Munz as well. We learn that von Frisch was, first, last, and always, a scientist. But he does seem to have been capable of presenting the proper aspect of his work and character when politics required. This proves to be an interesting case study of the in-between state—neither out-and-out Jew nor pure Aryan—many like von Frisch found themselves in.But enough. I hope I’ve presented enough to whet the appetite and tease a few cortical centers. Read the book and enjoy the stories of science and history at their most dynamic, intertwined.

"Dancing Bees" is a meticulously researched and elegantly written biography of Karl von Frisch, the Austrian ethologist and Nobel Prize winner who discovered how bees communicate to their hive mates the distance and direction of food sources. Dr. Tania Munz, whose descriptions of the first ingenious experiments through the interpretation of the honeybee's dance and beyond, shows an in-depth knowledge of her subject matter that in turn allows her to write in such a way that is understandable to the non scientist but at the same time fulfills the rigorous requirements expected from her peers. She tells von Frisch's story, a man deemed quarter Jewish by the Nazi regime, in the context of his time and place. The paradox of the threat of the honeybee deaths fueling the Nazi fear of a further food shortage for their armies and their ultimate willingness to put aside his cardinal sin of having a Jewish grandmother is a fascinating and thought-provoking story of the centuries-old battle of politics/science/religion.

No, really. I’ve been a hobbyist beekeeper all my life, read von Frische's books and a have a good library of entomology, esp. honeybees and the hymenoptera, including a dozen antiquarian bee books. My training was in philosophy and a special intersat in philosophy and history of science. Cherry on top, my family was from Bavaria, spoke German at home and I've studied a little on Nazi history and the aftermath.This is not a book for the bees are disappearing and I love them crowd. There are plenty of books on bee dancing which will suit them better. Muntz describes the process by which a scientist (ethologist) came to investigate the means by which the honeybee finds her food and the sensorium she deploys in her search. Frisch refined his experiments over his lifetime and this part of the story is well told. It's interesting toward th4e end when Frisch is compelled to revise his assumptions and observations. Science on the ground. I had forgotten the clever markings which allowed Frisch to specifically identify hundrerds of individuals in the hive.Skipping to the German thing, we learn here how it was possible (for the lucky few) to maneuver within the Purity Laws (Frisch was one quarter Jew). It's a touchy subject, to say the least. But as the3 philosopher Bernard Williams put it, many choices are not black and white, but “morally thick”. On some pages, Muntz is exculpatory on other condemnatory. I understand the urge to be one or another, the reader hopefully will find Williams a surer guide.Its the theory of science thing which wiggled my neurons. (1)Early on she remarks how Frishe's B&W films condition the viewer (us) to see color and smell odors where none are present. (2)Toward the ends she makes the postmodern point that seeing bees is dependent on the conceptualization the observer brings to the situation. In science -and life- see doesn't equal “see”. When I began to have bees in the sixties it was a mass of tiny insects. By now, I see the entrance board as a series of complex interactions among hundreds of individuals. And I'm no von Frisch! I fear these deep points in the book will not be widely appreciated.Yet I have a critical point to make here, as well. The concepts of Behaviorism, Intelligence, Instinct, Language, Consciousness et al. are not well defined, nor the supposed conflicts among them. These controversial topics in biology and beyond. For a simple example, what is the conflict between behaviorism and a belief in “instincts”, the reader may ask. After all, animals have bodies. Muntz reports the debates without always mking them clear. Perhaps the book is limited because Muntz took on some large projects: biography, philosophy of biography, dance language and Nazism and wrote a rather short book. Anyhow, I liked i