A honeybee returns to its hive after a productive visit to a nearby field of flowers, rich in pollen and nectar. It starts to dance. By waggling its body and strutting in a figure-of-eight, it conveys the duration and direction of the food source to its hive-mates. It was Karl von Frisch, an Austrian scientist, who first deciphered the waggle dance back in 1923. Now, 90 years after his pioneering work, we’re still learning amazing things about the messages that are exchanged within the hive.

When bees fly through the air outside the hive, they collide with charged particles, from dust to small molecules. These impacts tear electrons away from their cuticle—their outer shell—and the bee ends up with