He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1973, shared with Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen, for their discoveries concerning "organization and elicitation of individual and social behaviour patterns".
Von Frisch's research focused on the complex communication system of honey bees, specifically their "waggle dance". He demonstrated that bees use this dance to communicate the location of food sources to other members of the hive, providing information about distance and direction.