Von Frisch discovered the waggle dance, a particular figure-eight dance of honey bees by which successful foragers can communicate information with other members of their colony about the direction and distance to patches of flowers yielding nectar and pollen, or information regarding new nest-site locations.

In 1973 von Frisch shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen "for their discoveries concerning organization and elicitation of individual and social behaviour patterns."

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)