The waggle dance, a behavior used by honey bees to communicate the location of a resource to a nestmate, contains consistent and significant error.  Some authors suggest that this error exists as an adaptation of temperate honey bees to resources that are broadly distributed.  This hypothesis finds support in the observations that the distance of a resource from the hive is inversely correlated with the magnitude of dance error, and that tropical species of Apis dance with less error than do temperate species.  Others suggest that precision is constrained physiologically by a bee's ability to orient dances.  The current study shows that when dances are performed with a visual reference, dance precision increases, and its relationship with dance duration disappears.  Moreover, this study shows that the relationship between dance error and distance, and interspecific differences within Apis may be an artifact of the reference used for dance orientation.