The waggle dance, a behavior used by honey bees to communicate the location of a resource to a nest mate, 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 is based on the observation that the distance of a resource from the hive is inversely correlated with the magnitude of dance error, and on interspecific differences between temperate and tropical species of Apis. Others suggests that precision is constrained physiologically by the 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. Also, 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.