Adrian Wenner, Professor Emeritus (Natural History) at the University of California, Santa Barbara, still continues research and writing on the subject of bee biology, as well as several other topics. He began his career with a 1940s stint as an electronics technician in the U.S. Navy. While completing a mathematics degree in college, he worked several years with honey bees under the mentorship of his commercial beekeeping uncles, Clarence and Leo Wenner.
Adrian completed a new major in biology at Chico State University and went on to the University of Michigan for his doctorate. While there he was the first to discover the sounds made by bees during their waggle dance and pursued that lead for his dissertation. During later research, while teaching at the University of California in Santa Barbara, he and co-workers obtained experimental evidence sharply at variance with expectations of the dance language hypothesis. They eventually gained sufficient experimental evidence to conclude that a 1937 von Frisch hypothesis (that searching bees rely solely on odor and not on some sort of "language") could better explain honey bee recruitment to food crops - as well as the means by which swarms move.
Unfortunately, the publication of the experimental results that countered the dance language hypothesis generated intense hostility in the scientific community. The adverse reaction of the bee research community made it no longer possible for them to either publish in journals or to reply in print to those who challenged their work. Adrian then spent two decades in marine biological research while waiting for tempers to cool. During that time he and Patrick Wells studied the philosophy and sociology of science and published Anatomy of a Controversy: The Question of a "Language" Among Bees (Columbia University Press, 1990). That book documented the fact that resistance to their research rested not as much on evidence as on the training and attitude of scientists.
The notion of an odor-search hypothesis (as originally postulated by von Frisch) now has a broad following in the wider scientific community.
- Read Me First – A Chronology
- Science Round-Up: The Language of Bees
- Experiments on Directing Bee Flight by Odors
- Adrian Wenner Retirement Announcement
- The Relationship of Sound Production During the Waggle Dance of the Honey Bee to the Distance of the Food Source
- Sound Communication in Honeybees
- Sound Communication in Honey Bees – Support Material
- Excursus SI: The Question of a “Language” Among Bees
- Honey Bees: Do They Use the Direction Information Contained in Their Dance Maneuver?
- Honey Bees: Do They Use the Distance Information Contained in Their Dance Maneuver?
- Honey Bee Recruitment to Food Sources: Olfaction or Language?
- Do Honey Bees have a Language?
- Excursus EXC: The Question of a “Language” Among Bees
- The Honey Bee Dance Language Controversy: The Search for “Truth” vs. The Search for Useful Information
- Efficient Hunting of Feral Colonies
- A Method of Training Bees to Visit a Feeding Station
- The Honey Bees of Santa Cruz Island
- Swarm Movement: A Mystery Explained
- Recruitment, Search Behavior, and Flight Ranges of Honey Bees*
- Foraging, Recruitment, and Search Behavior of Honey Bees
- The Honey Bee Dance Language Controversy
- 2000 Years of Uncertainty
- History and Status of the Two Von Frisch Recruitment Hypotheses
- Recruitment to Food: Tangible Odor-Search or Mystical Language?
- Why Not Give All the Facts?
- Science as a Process: the Question of Bee ”Language”
- Is the Touted “Language” of Honey Bees Real?
- Odors, Wind and Colony Foraging (1 of 3): The Need for Odor
- Odors, Wind and Colony Foraging (2 of 3): The Role of Wind Direction
- Odors, Wind and Colony Foraging (3 of 3): Insights from Beehunting
- A Note on the Decisive “Proof” for Use of “Dance Language” Information
- More on the Honey Bee “Dance Language” Controversy
- Do Honey Bees Still Have a “Dance Language?”
- Bee “Language” Again?
- The Role of Controversy in Animal Behavior
- The Elusive Honey Bee Dance “Language” Hypothesis
- Excursus NG: The Scent Gland (Nasanov Gland) of Honey Bees
- Does Honey Bee Nasanov Pheromone Attract Foragers?
- A Parade of Anomalies: Learning
- Did Radar Tracking of Bee Flight Paths Resolve the Bee Language Controversy?
- Odor and Honey Bee Exploitation of Food Crops
- Resolving a Controversy or Shoring up a Belief System?
- Bee Controversy Breakthroughs: Odor-Search vs. “Language”
- The Honey Bee Odor-Search Hypothesis & DNA Genome Analysis
- Excursus TEL: Teleology
- Unsolicited Comments Regarding a Book (and Related Writings)
- The Anatomy of an Ecological Controversy: Honey-Bee Searching Behavior
- Varroa Mite Spread in the United States
- Colony Survival: A Better Bee or a Milder Mite?
- Lord of the Gadflies
- A True Bee Language
- The Exciting Potential of Remote Feral Bee Colonies for Varroa Coexistence
- A New View of the Waggle Dance: Making Scents to Recruit Fellow Foragers