Not so sure that they are "just insects"

[Dalantech]

More samples of Carpenter Bees:

http://dalantech.deviantart.com/art/...ef-II-99862216

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dalante...7600006896128/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dalante...7600006896128/

They are very large, and very intimidating, but the males don't even have a stinger and I've never been stung by a female.

[Apuuli]

Originally Posted by Barry

Wenner has shown overwhelming evidence to the role odor plays in recruiting bees to nectar sources. It's the "dance language" advocates that refuse to give any weight to the findings that Wenner et al. report. That sends up a big red flag for me.

Wenner is certainly not the only one to show the importance of odor in honey bee foraging. That is a well established fact. I have never run across any indication in the primary or secondary literature of anyone denying that odor plays a vital role in almost all aspects of honey bee behavior, including foraging (of course, I certainly haven't read everything, particularly the older literature). Except for the instances when Wenner claims that other scientists ignore his evidence. However, he seems to think that odor and dance are mutually exclusive, while no one else does. Other scientists don't ignore his evidence for odor being important, they just ignore his unfounded claims that his evidence disproves the dance language hypothesis.

Many of his objections to experiments that others accept as support for the dance language involve his expectations that naive honey bees will fly directly to bait stations if informed by the waggle dance in the hive. The fact that they take more time than a simple "bee-line" warrents indicates to him that no information is communicated at all through the dance. However, the generally accepted model states that a naive bee gets a rough idea of the location of the nectar source as well as a taste of the odor, flies directly to the imprecisely indicated location, switches to odor search mode, and begins to perform search flight patterns to hone in on the nectar source. Of course bees following this system would take longer than bees following a very specific hive-to-flower dance-only system.

This behavior works just fine for rich nectar sources as they are usually large enough to be found easily once the bee is in the general location and this system spreads out the foragers so they aren't all competing for nectar on a single plant in a blooming field and are able to exploit the entire patch. (Of course imprecise directions would not work very well when scouting new hive locations and there are indications that hive scouts give more specific directions.) This system allows honey bees to mobilize and quickly exploit rich sources of nectar even when they are limited in area and far from the hive (and downwind).

Wenner often appears hypocritical in his writings: accusing others of wearing blinders to any evidence but their own yet doing exactly that himself.

Riley et al. (2005) had an interesting paper. They used tiny harmonic transponders to track the flight paths of individual bees from hive to foraging area (something never before possible and seriously needed for detailed foraging studies). In a portion of the study, they took naive bees that had been in contact with a dancing bee (trained to a bait) as they were leaving the hive, transported them a distance from the hive (hundreds of meters) and then released them. These displaced bees flew to the general area the bait would have been in had the bees started at the hives. (For example, if the bees were displaced 200 meters south of the hive, they flew to about 200 meters south of the bait and began searching patterns.) These results indicate that the dancers transmited, and the new foragers used, spatial information, while ruling out pheromone trails (something that's very unlikely to function in the air and I've never seen suggested before this thread), pheromone marking, or any other odors as a guide from the hive to the general foraging spot (again, once in the general area, no one denies that odors play an important role in guiding the bee to its final target).

http://www.biobees.com/library/pesti...ature_2005.pdf

Wenner also mentions the failure of robot bees to communicate information to foragers. For a long time this was true because researchers failed to understand HOW this information was communicated. However, a paper by Michelsen et al (1992) (that Wenner even mentions as a failure) reported that they had indeed figured out some of the ways the information was transmitted (e.g., air movement by wings) and managed to recruit new foragers to sites the robot specified.

Nothing I've said here is original. Scientists are like everyone else: they often get a little too attached to an idea and hold onto pet fights like rabid pit bulls. Fortunately, the evidence is out there all written down for everyone to read and think for themselves. In the scientific community, it's amazing how fast widely held paradigms are shed when faced with well documented and well argued evidence. One individual or group can't dominate scientific discussion for too long unless the new information and reinterpretation of old data is consistantly supporting their ideas, but that doesn't stop some from trying.

[Dalantech]

Originally Posted by Apuuli

...Scientists are like everyone else: they often get a little too attached to an idea and hold onto pet fights like rabid pit bulls...

I've found that atheism drives a lot of the scientific research. The universe hasn't existed long enough for us to evolve intelligence, and if you start finding intellect and reasoning in insects then the hypothesis of evolution (as well as atheism) doesn't have any ground to stand on...