Waggle

Click anywhere in the meadow to put flowers there. Inside the dark hive, a forager tells the others where they are, by dancing.

click the meadow

Honeybees dance on a vertical comb in total darkness. The straight middle part of the figure-eight, the waggle run, points at an angle from straight up that matches the flower's angle from the sun. Straight up means "fly toward the sun". The longer the waggle lasts, the farther away the flowers are, roughly a second for each kilometre. The bees around the dancer feel the vibration and follow it with their antennae, then fly out on the bearing it gave them. They translate the sky into gravity and back again.

The sun here moves slowly across the sky, like the real one does, and the dance angle turns with it, because the bees always measure from where the sun is now. The numbers are simplified; real dances vary between colonies.