# Honeybee Swarms



## rosinbio (Jun 5, 2005)

I am going to post here a message on honeybee-swarms, that I actually want to see posted on BeeSource P.O.V. list, which is "more sophisticated", I mean only in terms of dealing with scientific issues.

I sent the message to Barry, for his evaluation. However, since I now realize, I have to wait for him to come back from his Honeymoon, to even look at the message, I decided to post it here, in the meantime. Couldn't do any harm. But I don't want to become involved in any endless debates about it. So, anyone who has reservations, or points of criticism, about this post, is welcome to express them. But, I do not intend to respond.

Also, for some reason, the message came out in fonts of different sizes. I do not know how to fix that. So I shall leave it "as is". Here is the message:
------------------------------------
Note a very recent publication in ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR, 2006, 71, 161171 doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2005.04.009 
How does an informed minority of scouts guide a honeybee swarm as it flies to its new home?

MADELEINE BEEKMAN, ROBERT L. FATHKE & THOMAS D. SEELEY.

The authors posed the question of how the swarm knows in which direction to fly, when only 5% of the bees, i.e. the nest-scouts who had visited the new nest-site know where it is? The study used man-made swarms, and prospective nest-sites in the form of small wooden-hives, baited with one empty (apparently used) comb, and a lure made of the major components of Nasanov-glands secretion. The authors tested the vision hypothesis, (the possibility that the scouts visually guide the swarm in the right direction by fast streaking through the swarm, actually in the upper part of the swarm), vs the olfactory hypothesis (the possibility that the scouts guide the swarm by emitting odors from the 2 Nasanov-glands on their abdomen, so that this results in an odor-gradient in the direction of the new nest-site). To test the olfactory hypothesis the authors used swarms where all the bees had the openings to their Nasanov-glands sealed. The study showed that the treatment did not interfere with the ability of the swarm to fly quickly and directly to the new nest, compared to control-swarms with unsealed glands. 

It is well-known that the scouts expose their Nasanov-glands once the swarm reaches the new nest-site, and that the odors from the exposed glands aid the swarm in entering the new nest. The results of the study, however, led the authors to discard the olfactory hypothesis, as far as guiding the swarm in flight is concerned. The vision hypothesis also poses problems, because the "streakers" streak in the direction of the new nest (for stretches of about 30 mm.), at a speed of about 10 m. per second, which is the fastest speed a swarm in flight achieve . The swarm achieves this maximum speed only gradually, but the "streakers" do not increase their streaking speed; which means that they do not fly faster than other bees in the swarm, once the swarm achieves maximal speed, so how could the streaking guide the swarm, when the swarm has already achieved maximum speed? 

The authors are, therefore, still faced with a mystery. There is, however, a very simple solution to the problem, because the authors, which the authors were unable to find because they failed to pose the right wedded to the honeybee "dance language" (DL) hypothesis. This is not surprising at all, since the 
senior author, Thomas Seeley, has been known for years as a staunch DL supporter.

The first one to discover that nest-scouts dance in the swarm, and to study their behavior, and the behavior of the swarm, was Martin LIndauer, v. Frisch's best known former student and collaborators, and his work is, indeed, cited by the authors. LIndauer has naturally been a staunch DL supporter. V. Frisch took it for granted that food-foragers decide when to dance, depending on the quality of the food, and the need for food in the colony. He knew that foragers never dance in the absence of dance-attendants, but assumed that the foragers know ("instinctively", or otherwise), that they should not waste time and energy to dance unless they have an audience prepared to receive the spatial information contained in the dances, about the site visited by the foragers. (See v. Frisch's 1967 book.) 


By the same token, Lindauer naturally took it for granted that nest-scouts also decide when to dance, depending on the quality of the prospective nest they found, and that other swarm-mates who attend scouts'-dances then find the site by using the spatial information contained in the dances. The swarm may have different groups of bees, where each group "advertises" a different site in dances. But eventually all dancing scouts end up advertising one and the same site, apparently the best site found by any of the scouts. 

Seeley, T. D. l(1977). Measurement of nest cavity volume by the 
honeybee ( Apis mellifera ). Behav Ecol Sociobiol 2:201227

Seeley TD, Buhrman SC (1999) Group decision making in swarms, eventually studied how nest-scouts evaluate the size of the cavity they find. 

He used apparently wooden, cylindrical boxes of various sizes, and found out that when a nest-scout enters such a box, it crawls around the circumference of the base, and that the scouts tended to dance more often for his boxes that had a longer circumference of the base (which meant also larger base, and a larger volume of the cavity). 

He concluded that the scouts decide whether to dance, or not, based on their assessment of the volume of the cavity, and that they determine the volume of the cavity by determining the area of the base, which they achieve be measuring the circumference of the base. 

To determine the length of that circumference by crawling along its length, requires a counting ability. There is, however, no evidence, and , therefore, no reason to believe that honeybees can count at all. 

Apart from that, as I pointed out in ABJ (2000), vol. 140(1), Jan. pp. 12-13, the size of an area cannot be determined from the length of its margins. The size of the area enclosed within margins of a specific length is maximal, when the area is round, but may also be very small, as long as it leaves a honeybee enough room to crawl around the margins. Natural cavities, of course, do not occur in the form of perfect cylinders, let alone perfect cylinders of the same height as that used by Seeley.. 

I also pointed out that nest-scouts would not stand a chance of finding the few natural cavities (in the trunk of a tree in the woods), that are appropriate for a nest, if they were to simply examine just any tiny hole out of the myriad of tiny holes that exist in their natural environment. The scouts must, therefore, be attracted to specific tiny holes, by the odors those holes have, which the holes share with odors the scouts had learned to associate with a nest. In nature such cavities, often resulting from a lighting-strike, have the odors of "wounded" wood. Seeley's cylinders probably attracted the scouts by wood-odors. Then, if the base had a longer circumference, the scouts , naturally, took longer to crawl along the circumference, which would have resulted in their spending a longer period of time inside the cylinder, and, thus, adsorbing onto their bodies a higher concentration of the attractive odors in the cylinder. 

Other factors, such as alien odors which repel the scouts, temperature and light-intensity, winds, inside the cavity, undoubtedly also play a role in the amount of time nest-scouts spend inside a cavity they find. .V. Frisch (in his 1967 book,) had, however, already noted that odors may play a role in attracting nest-scouts. But Seeley completely ignored that. 

Honeybees (whether foragers, or nest-scouts), never decide whether to dance, or not. The dance results from an escape by bees carrying attractive odors, from hive-mates, or swarm-mates, who chase after them, after being attracted by the odors such bees carry. In the case of successful nest-scouts, some swarm-mates are attracted by the odors the scouts carry on their bodies, from the cavity they found; which are the odors that attracted the scouts to the cavity in the first place. Some of the dance-attendants then find the same cavity, but they do so by use of odor alone all along. The odors they carry back to the swarm then attract other swarm-mates, and the new bees that found the cavity, thus, become additional scouts that "advertise" that cavity.. Swarm bees very gradually come to prefer the scouts that carry more attractive odors. The scouts that carry less attractive odors are, thus, not chased any more, and, therefore, do not dance either. They may themselves be attracted by the odors carried by the scouts that bring back to the swarm more attractive odors, and eventually find the cavity visited by the scouts that bring in the most attractive odors. This is how a "consensus" is reached, where there is only one large group of nest-scouts, all advertising one and the same cavity. 

Bees in a swarm are attracted visually, as well as by odors, to other swarm-mates, as well as to odors from the queen (which most of them cannot see). This is how the swarm keeps together. Swarm bees are, however, also attracted by the odors nest-scouts carry on their bodies. 

It is these odors, which are adsorbed onto the scouts' bodies, and gradually wash off as the scouts fly with the swarm, that create the odor-gradient that leads swarm-bees in the direction of the cavity. The scouts expose their Nasanov -glands only after they land at the entrance to the cavity. I have never seen any report by anyone who saw them expose those glands while flying with the swarm. The scouts attract swarm-mates only by the odors adsorbed onto their bodies, and sealing the Nasanov-glands of all the bees in the swarm, therefore, should not have any effect on the swarm's-flight to the new nest; as the study showed. 

The authors knew they had deliberately used in their prospective nests odors that attract nest-scouts. However, the possibility that such odors, that adsorb onto the bodies of scouts that visit such a prospective nest, are the odors that also attract swarm-mates, which results in the dances of nest-scouts, and then, when there is a large enough number of scouts which all carry the same attractive odors, which suffice to attract the whole swarm to fly with them, has never occurred to the authors. The olfactory hypothesis needs to be rejected only in the version the authors tested, which depends on odors emitted by the scouts' Nasanov-glands. Other than that, an olfactory hypothesis which depends on odors from the cavity, that are adsorbed onto the scouts'-bodies, appears to be a very simple solution, and the only proper solution to the problem. 

The case only goes to show ever new trouble that is caused by the belief that honeybees have a DL!


----------



## FordGuy (Jul 10, 2005)

if queens pipe why cant scouts?


----------



## rosinbio (Jun 5, 2005)

No one ever heard scouts piping.


----------



## Tim Vaughan (Jun 23, 2002)

"because the "streakers" streak in the direction of the new nest (for stretches of about 30 mm."

Surely that's a typo?

I enjoyed your critique. It helps explain why swarm removal can be such a pain when you can't or neglect to seal off the cavity you remove them from in someones house. The bees smell the old wax, propolis etc.. and naturally that's very attractive to the new swarm, so every year you can get one going to the same place.

When you have a bunch of old hives around, the swarms don't go (usually) to those which died of foul brood. You can have two hives standing side by side and if one smells like FB or insecticide and the other just like a natural dead out or a sticky super etc.. they go to the one without the bad smell of chemical or disease even though both boxes are of the same dimensions.

Also, even though one may be totally dark in side they still chose the one that smells right, so you can rule out sight. Smell is the only thing that makes sense.


----------



## Kieck (Dec 2, 2005)

"In nature such cavities, often resulting from a lighting-strike, have the odors of "wounded" wood. Seeley's cylinders probably attracted the scouts by wood-odors." -Ruth Rosin

I assume, then, that bees carry some heritable trait that makes these particular "wood odors" attractive to the bees? Otherwise, scouts don't live long enough to learn and remember such things, and I know for a fact that none of my hives have so far been struck by lightning, so they couldn't "remember" it from the current hive.

I'd also have to assume that AHB (Africanized honey bees) must lack this trait. I've read repeatedly that swarms of AHB will often take up residence underground, espeically in water meter pits. Water meter pits don't have wood in them, so no "wood odors" are attracting them. How could they locate and disseminate odors to entice swarms to move into these meter pits?


----------



## Tim Vaughan (Jun 23, 2002)

> I assume, then, that bees carry some heritable trait that makes these particular "wood odors" attractive to the bees? Otherwise, scouts don't live long enough to learn and remember such things, and I know for a fact that none of my hives have so far been struck by lightning, so they couldn't "remember" it from the current hive.
> 
> Water meter pits don't have wood in them, so no "wood odors" are attracting them. How could they locate and disseminate odors to entice swarms to move into these meter pits?


You would do well to get someone with a grade school education to proof your posts before you click the "add reply" button. Or at least as questions in a way that makes people honestly want to answer them rather that respond to your simplistic provocations. To say



> I'd also have to assume that AHB (Africanized honey bees) must lack this trait. I've read repeatedly that swarms of AHB will often take up residence underground, espeically in water meter pits.


is foolish beyond belief. How many water boxes do you think there are in the native ranges of AHB? I've taken them out of several types of places in Africa from old aardvark holes to between two studs in my own garage. Why on earth would you assume that A. m. Scutellata doesn't nest in tree cavities in nature? They do, of course, and also in caves, on grape vines, under roofs and in fallen logs. Nobody ever said that wood odors were the ONLY scent that was attractive to scouts.


----------



## BjornBee (Feb 7, 2003)

Wow!


----------



## Tim Vaughan (Jun 23, 2002)

OK, go tattle like last time if that's in line with your sense of male honor.

But in defence, Kieck wasn't trying to add anything to an interesting subject. He clearly was engaged in provocation. I pointed out, probably more harshly than was proper, but I don't want people with valuable information to run away in frustration as happens all too often.


----------



## Jim Fischer (Jan 5, 2001)

Hmm, spring seems to be coming early this year.

_Jejune is busting out all over._

(With apologies to Rodgers and Hammerstein)


----------



## Kieck (Dec 2, 2005)

I'll admit to some degree that my first paragraph is simplisitic, and probably more of a provocation than I'd intended after rereading it. But seriously, a "grade school education?" So, I'll try to reword it so it's less of a provocation and more of a question.

Do bees have a genetic preference for certain odors in potential hives other than scents associated with past residence by honey bees? Have any studies confirmed a preference for particular "wounded wood" odors?

Seems to me that such a study would have tremendous application for beekeepers attempting to trap swarms. If, for instance, bees do have a genetic predisposition to settle in wood stuck by lightning, beekeepers could "zap" their swarm traps with high voltage to simulate the odors.

As far as the second part, I'll agree that it's provocative, but not foolish. You state, Tim, right after quoting my assumption, that water meter pits aren't common in the native ranges of A. m. scutellata, so those bees clearly could not have a genetic predisposition to the smells associated with meter pits. You also point out that AHB and A. m. scutellata nest in places ranging from old aardvark holes to cavities in wood. So, let me ask again, what "scents" are distinctive about water meter pits or culverts that can distiguish them from other holes in the ground? The swarms have to "follow" the scouts somehow or other to those locations; how do they wind up in cavities large enough for them, rather than, say, smaller cavities very close to their chosen sites?

At the risk of asking another "grade-school" level question, how do the bees -- using scent alone -- distinguish cavities suitable for nest sites from cavities (maybe even in the same individual tree) that are too small?


----------



## Murphy (Jun 7, 2005)

Tim,

I also lived in various countries in Southern Africa and saw the African bee in many of the same settings you spoke about.

We even found them down mine shafts.

BTW where did you live in SA.

I think this is a great topic and should not be openly dismissed due to past interactions with Rosinbo.  


Regards,

Kieran


----------



## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Perhaps I have no right or standing ion saying this but, Tim Vaughn wants people to be less symplistic and foolish beyond belief. And then severerly critisises someone. What's with the hostility, all of the time? Is this just your personality? Do find it hard to suffer simplistic questions?

"I don't want people with valuable information to run away in frustration as happens all to often."
Tim Vaughn says.

So, Tim, those with questions that might not come up to your standards, should forget it or keep thier mouths shut?

If you thought that you were helping "prickly pear", seems to me that she can defend herself and hasn't been discouraged from presenting her views and statements.


----------



## FordGuy (Jul 10, 2005)

"No one ever heard scouts piping.

--------------------
Sincerely
Ruth Rosin ("Prickly pear")"

has anyone listened?


----------



## Murphy (Jun 7, 2005)

FordGuy, do you mean boy scouts?


----------



## FordGuy (Jul 10, 2005)

Mr. Vaughan wrote: "You would do well to get someone with a grade school education to proof your posts before you click the "add reply" button. Or at least AS questions in a way that makes people honestly want to answer them .....

AS questions? Oh the irony. I guess if you folks get someone with more than a grade school education, he could help Mr. Vaughan with his spelling also. 

What is the point is calling his ideas foolish or casting such insults in this kind of forum? if you think he is stupid, why not just call him and tell him, (or go see him and slug it out, which would be my preference) instead of smearing all of us with your bad attitude. I don't have a dog in this fight, and I certainly don't care much for grammar police, but just remember if you are going to go around throwing stones just make darn sure you don't live in a glass house. You could always start your own website where people as smart as you and agree with all your ideas, and don't have any contrary ideas, are allowed in. If you think his ideas are dumb, wait till you have heard some of mine! (But I was one of the folks that thought a long time ago airplanes full of fuel could be used as missiles....) no failure of imagination here!


----------



## Kieck (Dec 2, 2005)

Wenner published information about the sounds that returning scouts make when they return to the hive. Those sounds aren't necessarily the same as piping by queens, but they are still unique sounds. Wenner pointed out that the variation in the durations of the sounds was too great to accurately convey distance information, but the sounds may still play a role in recruiting other foragers.


----------



## FordGuy (Jul 10, 2005)

I'd love to read this study - where could I see it?


----------



## Murphy (Jun 7, 2005)

Kieck,

Do you know if these sounds were recorded and posted on the internet? I would be interested in hearing them.

Fordguy, I am glad no one is checking my grammar because it stinks. I suggest when people get ticked of with someone they PM them.

Kieran


----------



## Kieck (Dec 2, 2005)

I've seen two papers by Wenner about sound production by returning scouts:

Wenner, A. M. 1959. "The relationship of sound production during the waggle dance of the honey bee to the distance of the food source." Bulletin of the Entomological Society of America, volume 5, page 142.

Wenner, A. M. 1962. "Sound production during the waggle dance of the honey bee." Animal Behavior, volume 10, pages 79-95.

(If you're having trouble finding copies of these papers, PM me. I'll try to help you out.)

I don't know of any recordings on the internet -- there could easily be some, and I just don't know about them. I'd recommend finding a "dancing" bee in a hive, watching it, and listening to the sound it makes while dancing. The sound is quite distinctive.


----------



## Jim Fischer (Jan 5, 2001)

> The sound is quite distinctive.

And it takes a pretty good microphone and
recorder to capture it. 150Hz to 250Hz is
the band that I try to enhance, repressing
all other frequency bands to zero to cut out
the confusion of overlapping sounds.

Some folks have used mechanical vibration
sensors (accelerometers) which they attach
to or embed in the comb, but this is often
a weaker signal than the audio, and requires
an analog to digital converter to convert to
a useful expression of frequency without all
that mucking about with doing Fourier 
transformaions "by hand".


----------



## Murphy (Jun 7, 2005)

So Jim do you have a recording of it?


----------



## FordGuy (Jul 10, 2005)

one of my buddies has an acoustics design company, and he is just the type to get some enjoyment out of such an experiment. I have been looking for something like this to do a study on, and since there is little public support for such a theory, I'd love to take it on to prove or disprove it, or at least to uncover more evidence one way or the other.


----------



## iddee (Jun 21, 2005)

Mark, if you will look a little closer, you will see other goofs. Like missing commas, "that" rather than "than", defense spelled with a C, ETC. I quit responding to Mr. Vaughn quite a while ago, just because he is so friendly and tactful.


----------



## HarryVanderpool (Apr 11, 2005)

Anyone know where I left my hive tool?


----------



## FordGuy (Jul 10, 2005)

the reason I think sound is more likely than a visual message like waggle is waggle when seen above (human eyes) carries a fairly clear pattern, but if you were a abee you wouldn't see a figure 8. Waggle is more likely a cue that "I'm making the sound, focus on me" Sound on the other hand, could relay an immense amount of information to every forager in the hive. 

attention all foragers (tap tap tap)
item (nectar, pollen, water, enemy)
amount (from a flower to a field of them)
2 o clock from a 12 o clock sunrise (direction)
300 meters distance in meters
end of message (whirr buzz, or some other distinct sound)


----------



## HarryVanderpool (Apr 11, 2005)

Found it! Sorry to interrupt....









[ February 17, 2006, 12:38 PM: Message edited by: HarryVanderpool ]


----------



## Murphy (Jun 7, 2005)

Fordguy,

I think that would be great if you could get your friend to this. I think the whole communication thing is fascinating.

Kieran


----------



## FordGuy (Jul 10, 2005)

he's an engineer and a tinkerer...and successful at his business...and he owes me some favors! haha. I did some legal stuff for him some time back. I think I'd need to read the other study so as to not re invent the wheel.


----------



## Tim Vaughan (Jun 23, 2002)

Hey, Murphy. We were in the Richtersvelt/Bushmanland area.


----------



## rosinbio (Jun 5, 2005)

To KIeck,

As usual you make comments that are totally irrelevant to the issue at hand, and provide answers to question that neither you, nor anyone else can answer.

Wenner studied the sound produced by dancing food-foragers, during the waggle-run. In all waggle-dances (including waggle-dances performed by nest-scouts), the waggle-run is always accompanied by a pulsed sound. Butthe sound produced by dancing bees is totally irrelevant to the problem of what leads the swarm to follow the scouts into the newnest-site.

Scouts do not have an inherited attraction to odors associated with a nest. They learn what such odors smell like, as a result of having developed and lived in a nest. No one knows, or can know the long gone, ancient evolution of honeybees that resulted in their first beginning to occupy wooden cavities.


----------



## rosinbio (Jun 5, 2005)

To Tim Vaugham,

I also found the only 30 mm. "streaks" unbelievable, where 30 cm. would make more sense. But, as far as I can remember, the authors mention the 30 mm. more than once. So it is most probably not a typo. They also do not state whether the "streakers" could be identified specifically as marked nest-scouts.

I have no doubt that nest-scouts are attracted to prospective nest-sites by odor, and that alien ("dad") odors repel them. No body actually studied it, but I would not be surprised at all, if the scouts would not stay for long in a cavity that has attractive odors, but is too hot, or too cold inside because there are other openings leading to the cavity.


----------



## BerkeyDavid (Jan 29, 2004)

well I think the sound thing ought to be looked at. There are definitly some communications that go on based on pitch (frequency), and probably also based on volume.

My uneducated guess is that there is a little bit of both going on. The hive is a complex orgnanism that engages in concertive action ulitizing a multitude of methods, including movement, odor (and other chemicals) as well as sound.

People communicate in many ways, as do other animals. It only makes sense that bees would also.

(harry, were you sitting on your hive tool again?)


----------



## Kieck (Dec 2, 2005)

To Ruth,

In a different comment, you said that no one has ever heard scouts piping. What's the difference between "piping" and the "pulsed sound" produced during the waggle dances? Is there a fundamental difference between the two, or is it strictly a difference in name?

As far as my comments about learning or inheriting preferences for certain odors that the bees associate with the hive, I fail to understand WHY a discussion of how these preferences are created is irrelevant. Perhaps you (or someone else) could enlighten me? I commented that the scouts don't live all that long. Logically, then, these scouts wouldn't have lived in a series of hives but in one hive only. The smells in their original hives would be the only ones that I would expect them to associate with suitable hive sites (unless there IS an instinctive preference). Following the train of thought, then, bees should seek out very similar situations for establishing new colonies. And in some cases they do, moving into the walls of buildings. (Most stick-built buildings here are built with pine lumber of some variety.)

But that still begs the question of how they differentiate from one odor plume to the next. Do swarms actually find cavities by trial-and-error? For instance, in a situation with a cavity in pine too small for a hive, a cavity ideally sized for a hive, and some large pine planks (no cavity) in close proximity, would the swarm be likely to alight first on the bare planks, then transfer to the cavity? If not, how could they distinguish the odor plume wafting from the pine cavity from the odor plume wafting from the tiny cavity from the odor plume wafting from the bare pine planks?


----------



## rosinbio (Jun 5, 2005)

Hi All,

As far as I know honeybees in the hive start making "a lot of buzzing noise" inside the hive, at least hours before a swarm leaves the hive. 

And someone even tried to develop a system of loud-speakers that would alert beekeepers at home, that a swarm is about to exit soon, so that the beekeepers could stop it, by finding the queen and moving her together with many of the workers into a new, empty hive.

I think the issue had been brought up on the Irishbeekeeping web-site.


----------



## db_land (Aug 29, 2003)

Now rosenbio, don't give up so easily with your smelly ODOR theory. Surely bees preparing to swarm generate a large amount of ODOR in the hive hours before swarming - how else could they possibly "know" it's time to warm? Heck, the swarming bees are so smelly the parent hive won't allow them back into the hive fully no-way all along!

Hey TV, I lived in Sandton (a Johannesburg suburb) for a few years and removed a swarm from the below ground water meter in front of the house. 

My theory is bees are attracted to musty odors and learned to pipe in Ireland. If you like, I can prove it using "prickly pear" style circular reasoning.


----------



## JohnBeeMan (Feb 24, 2004)

Could it possibly be mold oders that the scout bees detect? This would explain why they find both the hollow trees (aka lightning strikes)and the water meter cavities. And it would not necessarily be restricted to current generation scout bees - i.e. genetic memory.

Let the firing begin


----------



## buckbee (Dec 2, 2004)

The critique at the head of this thread is nothing more than another obsessive rant, full of meaningless sentences, e.g. 

>There is, however, a very simple solution to the problem, because the authors, which the authors were unable to find because they failed to pose the right wedded to the honeybee "dance language" (DL) hypothesis.

unsubstantiated, meaningless assertions, e.g.

>The scouts must, therefore, be attracted to specific tiny holes, by the odors those holes have

>Honeybees (whether foragers, or nest-scouts), never decide whether to dance, or not.

and specious arguments (end to end) and does not warrant publication in any form, anywhere, IMO.


----------



## rosinbio (Jun 5, 2005)

To Ford Guy,

The only information the sound produced by dancing bees may carry to other hive-mates, or swarm-mates, is that there is a sound they hear.

But bees not attracted by the odors the dancer caries ignore it completely. And bees attracted by the odors become dance-attendants. But, there has never been any even remotely convincing evidence that they obtain any information from the sound. 

And I adamantly refuse to go into it all over again.


----------



## rosinbio (Jun 5, 2005)

Correction to my first post on HONEYBEE SWARMS.

To Bucckbee,

My nonsensical statement is simply due to my e-mail composing program, which keeps deleting portions of my message without my even being aware of it. It is very frustrating, and I don't know what to do about it. I even asked the experts on one discussion groups, and have been advised to delete only by using the backspace; which is a real drag. So, I sometimes forget not to delete by selecting and clicking on "delete". I deliberately try to very carefully re-read before sending, but sometimes, especially when sending a long post, I end up not doing it carefully enough. (I copied that whole post from another post, which I now need to check very carefully, because I had already sent copies to other sites.)

At any rate, my utterly meaningless statement should read:

There is, however, a very simple solution to the problem, which the authors were unable to find because they failed to ask the right question. And they failed to ask the right question because they are still wedded to the honeybee "dance language" (DL) hypothesis.

Thanks for catching the sheer nonsense in my post, which gives me a chance to correct it!


----------



## Keith Benson (Feb 17, 2003)

"So, anyone who has reservations, or points of criticism, about this post, is welcome to express them. But, I do not intend to respond."

"And I adamantly refuse to go into it all over again."

I detect a pattern here.

Keith


----------



## Dick Allen (Sep 4, 2004)

Keith, beehave yourself....
(btw, do you think Aaron Morris believes in the dance language?)


----------



## rosinbio (Jun 5, 2005)

To Murphy,

Very lovely quote from Yeats! This alone was worth staying in this forum.

To BUckbee,

Thanks again for cathing the mess in my first post on honeybee swarms. I have had to correct and re-mail the message to at least 3 other spots. Done already.


----------



## rosinbio (Jun 5, 2005)

To Kieck,

You said you know that honeybees produce sounds that are probably not like queen piping. Now you expect me to explain why the sound dancing foragers produce during the waggle-run is not called piping?

The pulsed sound emitted during the waggle-run is probably produced by the wing-vibrations. The wings can never produce a piping sound.

Tree-bark look very different than the wood inside a cavity in the trunk of a tree. It also probably has very different odors, for which nest-scouts have never developed an attraction, because the scouts never lived out in the open on the trunk of any tree. All strains of Apis mellifera nest only in dark cavities.

I don't know anything about water-meter pits, or what's in them. The water-meters I know are always covered by a (I think), a bottomless metal box. And I have never heard of any honeybee swarms settling into them.

On very rare occasions you pose a pertinent, but very difficult question. I am very skeptical that nest-scouts choose a cavity to fit the size of the swarm,. I do not believe they have the "brains" needed to understand such a concept as swarm-size. Besides, a swarm could very easily use a far larger cavity than initially needed, because it is quite capable of gradually increasing manyfold in size. When the colony outgrows the size of the cavity it inhabits, the colony start raising new queens, and sending out swarms. (Seasonal availability of food is undoubtedly a major cause for increase in colony-size, but other factors may also play a role in swarming.)

Going back to nests, there is no doubt that attractive odors alone do not determine where a swarm will settle, and other factors, never properly studied (because they may constitute very complex combinations), also play a role here. Honeybee nest-scouts will not inspect a source of attractive odors, unless the source of the odors lead to a small entrance, which, in turn, leads to a dark cavity. These are the minimal conditions that the scouts had learned to associate with a nest. A very small cavity might not even produce attractive odors in a concentration high enough to attract the scouts. Or the scouts would leave very fast, because there is too much light inside, since a very small cavity means that every spot inside is very close to the entrance. Or the temperature inside the cavity may not be acceptable to the scouts, due to air-drafts from other holes that lead to the cavity. (Even if the cavity has only one small entrance hole, the size and shape of the cavity itself, may affect the temperature inside, because they affect the rate of exchange of the air inside, with air from the outside.)


----------



## Tim Vaughan (Jun 23, 2002)

It's common in AHB areas for bees to nest in water/gas meters. They range in size from about a loaf of bread to about a cubic yard. There is a little hole on top that ranges from a little smaller than the size of hole you can make touching your thumb to your index finger to somewhat larger. That hole is used for the meter reader to open the box.


----------



## rosinbio (Jun 5, 2005)

Hi All,

For a considerable amount of information on all phases of honeybee-swarming, go to:

BeeSource.com | POV | Dr. Adrian M. Wenner 1993 14. SWARM MOVEMENT: A MYSTERY EXPLAINED. Am. Bee J. 132:27-31. Jan. 1992 (Wenner).

In that article Wenner describes, among others, the well-known exposure of scouts' Nasanov-glands after the swarm had reached the new nest-site. He also notes that the scouts may expose those glands while guiding the swarm in flight. But, there is no mention of actual observations, which would be very difficult, if not impossible to make.

I deliberately rechecked this article, because I remembered that it contained some quite interesting, specific evidence against the DL hypothesis, as far as the dances of nest-scouts are concerned. Wenner reports he actually observed nest-scouts dancing after the swarm had already reached the new nest-site. Such dances are obviously quite useless in communicating to any swarm-mates the location of the new nest-site, after the scouts, and all the rest of the swarm, had already arrived there.


----------



## rosinbio (Jun 5, 2005)

Hi All,

It is worthwhile noting that in his ABJ 1992) about honeybee swarms, Wenner also notes that:

1. Nest scouts crawl inside the cavity they found, presumably (according to Seeley) measuring the size of the cavity. He also notes that scouts can sometimes be observed crawling around the entrance-hole to the cavity, presumably measuring the size of the entrance. I had already noted earlier that there is no evidence, and therefore no reason to believe that honeybees can count at all; which, in turn, means that there is no reason to believe that they can measure anything that requires using an arbitrary measuring unit. I also noted that, factors which make a cavity of one size more attractive to nest-scouts than a cavity of a different size, may be factors only indirectly related to actual size.

2. When the swarm moves in what appears to be a direct flight to the new nest-site, the scouts often fly ahead of the swarm, and then back to the swarm.

3. Even when the swarm as a whole appears to be flying a direct rout, individual swarm-mates can be seen moving in circles; which suffices to exclude the possibility that they are affected by any distance & direction information from any scout-dances they might have attended earlier. He points out that it is difficult to seriously consider the possibility that honeybees can transcribe distance & direction information from dances, while flying in circles.

A closely related problem also plagues the claims of the authors of the radar-tracking study (in Nature, of May 12, , that their radar-tracked bees used distance & direction information from foragers'-dances. The radar-tracked bees did not fly in circles, but (as the radar-tracks clearly showed), more often than not, they flew visibly jagged, rather than straight routes.

The authors concluded that the straight line which connect the start-point and end-point of each such route (but not the routes actually flown), fit the distance & direction information in the dances well enough. This is why the authors state that the bees flew the expected distance & direction "on the vector", i.e. as determined by the straight line (start to finish), but not by the actual flight-route. 

This requires the bees to be able to transcribe the distance & direction information while flying an indirect route, i.e. integrating the different legs of the trip. This, in turn, requires honeybees to perform very complex mathematical calculation, without any evidence that they can do anything like that at all.

There are, thus, basic problems with the claims made by the authors of that study, starting with the radar-tracked flight-routes which, more often than not, did not even fit any expected direct route based on use of the distance & direction information contained in the dances attended.

I have nothing more to say about honeybee swarms, and will, therefore, unsubscribe.


----------



## Hillside (Jul 12, 2004)

>"often resulting from a lighting-strike, have the odors of "wounded" wood."

In my high school and college years I spent a lot of time working for an arborist doing repair on damaged trees. Rarely did I ever see a lightning strike cause a cavity that a bee would find attractive. Most cavities are caused by infectous agents of some kind or another. Is it possible that bees are attracted to the smell of decaying wood?

Different woods smell very differently when physically wounded. I have my doubts that damaged wood itself is part of the equation. Has anyone ever seen bees hanging around a freshly sawn wood pile?


----------



## Robert Hawkins (May 27, 2005)

I've seen them collect sawdust from a freshly sawn woodpile.

Hawk


----------



## rosinbio (Jun 5, 2005)

Hi All,

First, I need to enter a CORRECTION: I reported that a loud buzzing can be heard from inside the hive hours before a swarm emerges. I thought I might have been wrong, in mentioning only hours, and Wenner's article about swarms confirmed for me that I had, indeed, erred. The loud buzzing sound starts several DAYS before the swarm emerges; which would give beekeepers plenty of time to address the situation, if they were only aware of the buzzing. This is why someone suggested arranging a system of microphones to be attached to hives, in order to alert beekeepers at home.

Second, to Hillside: 

Your information is quite interesting. I stated that in nature honeybees usually nest in cavities in the trunks of trees in the woods; which is quite correct. I also stated that such cavities are often caused by a lightning-strike. On this point, however, I simply relied on general information scattered in the literature.

The truth of the matter is that no one has ever attempted to study what odors attract nest-scouts to cavities. I thought of odors of wood-resins, which are always found in the bees' home-nest, because they always use propolis, that is actually wood-resin. I even checked the literature, years ago, and found out that resins from different types of wood share various chemical components, and concluded that they could, therefore, also easily share odors. I am not an expert on wood, and I am not even sure whether all tree-species produce resins. Maybe they do, but some species produce resins in much larger quantities, and when honeybees need propolis they gather it primarily from such trees. But, where would you find anything like wood-resins in boxes of water-meters, and gas-meters? Maybe different kinds of odors become associated for nest-scouts with the home-nest, and any components from the whole combination would suffice to attract the scouts?

In the study by Beekman et al. the authors used small hive-boxes with a swarm-lure made primarily from the major components of Nasanov-gland odors. And swarm-lures can be bought commercially.

However, there is no doubt in my mind that odors play an important role in attracting nest-scouts to prospective nest-sites. In fact, there is no doubt in my mind that nest-scouts dance in the swarm only because swarm-mates chase after them, being attracted by the odors the scouts carry on their bodies. Now, where in nature would nest-scouts find a cavity with Nasanov-gland odors, unless it is a cavity that had been previously occupied by a honeybee-colony? And I'm sure that swarms often move into cavities never occupied by honeybees before. I have also, never seen any indication that the first nest-scouts that finds a cavity exposes its own Nasanov-glands there, before leaving.

Third, to Robert Hawkins: 

Your observation is also pretty interesting. But, perhaps the bees you saw gathering sawdust gathered it as a source of resins for propolis?

Discovering what odors attract nest-scouts in nature could help produce more efficient swarm-lures. Wenner believes, however, that this would be very difficult to discover.


----------



## Dick Allen (Sep 4, 2004)

A neighbor (now retired) where I was raised in upstate New York supplements his social security by cutting and selling firewood. When my father had bees the neighbor reported that on warm spring days bees could readily be seen crawling over the sawdust. Some think bees confuse sawdust for pollen, but I'm inclined to think they're drawn to the sawdust more for it's starch content.


----------



## Barry (Dec 28, 1999)

An interesting post:

http://listserv.albany.edu:8080/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9301&L=BEE-L&P=R832&I=-3


----------



## Kieck (Dec 2, 2005)

To Ruth:

I appreciate your response! Honestly, I'm not trying to ask questions to poke holes in your hypotheses, but rather trying to see if these ideas "hold water," so to speak.

I'm still curious about a couple things, as well as wanting to offer a few clarifications/corrections.

"The pulsed sound emitted during the waggle-run is probably produced by the wing-vibrations. The wings can never produce a piping sound." -Ruth Rosin

I said the two sounds (the sound produced during the waggle-run and queen piping) might be different, but I wasn't and am not sure how they differ practically. Are they different pitches? Are they different intensities? You said the pulsed sound produced during the waggle-run is probably produced by wing vibrations (and I would imagine it is), so is "queen piping" produced through a different mechanism? How do queens produce the sounds that we call "piping?"

"All strains of Apis mellifera nest only in dark cavities." -Ruth Rosin

Nope. This one I have to disagree with. I'm surprised no one else took exception to this before I have. I have seen numerous photos of large sections of comb hanging from exposed tree branches or under eaves of houses. For a few examples, look at some of the photos on this link:

http://www.owensapiaries.net/removals.htm

As far as the water-meter pits are concerned, I'm afraid I've been using some jargon. Around here, "meter pits" include the shut-off valve, the water meter assembly, and a pressure-reducing valve, all set well below the surface of the ground in a cylinder with a metal cover (a "man hole," but really far too small for a man to fit through). The portion of the meter that a person reads is above ground, but the rest is all in a "pit". If the valves/pipes were too close to the surface of the earth in the winter, the water in the valves/pipes would freeze, and the change in volume would damage or rupture the water lines.

"2. When the swarm moves in what appears to be a direct flight to the new nest-site, the scouts often fly ahead of the swarm, and then back to the swarm." -Ruth Rosin from a report by Adrian Wenner

This seems to indicate that the scouts visually lead the swarms to the nest sites, rather than strictly relying on odor gradients.

I see some problems with the distance components of a dance language, but what about the direction elements? So far, none of the evidence I've read here really rules out the possibility that bees can use the direction component of a "dance" to locate resources indicated by scouts. Presented with a dance, are the recruits significantly more likely to travel in the direction indicated by the dance, perhaps even while moving as a swarm?


----------



## rosinbio (Jun 5, 2005)

To Barry,

The post you copied from Moss, concerns bees attracted to sawdust at the end of winter & early spring, i.e. before the swarming season starts. I strongly suspect that the bees are then attracted to the odors of resins in the sawdust. It is well-known that they gather resins for propolis.

Moss, however, still takes the stillborn DL hypothesis for granted, and believes that dancers decide when to dance. There is no doubt in my mind that dancers never decide when to dance, and that the dances are, instead, caused by hive-mates, or swarm-maters chasing after bees that carry attractive odors, and by the chased bees trying to escape from those who chase after them.

If bees dance after visiting wood-chips they were unable to carry, this is undoubtedly due to the odors from the wood-chips that adsorb onto the bees body-hair, and attract hive-mates (who do not know the chips can not be collected), just as those odors attracted the bees that found the chips in the first case.

The fact that honeybees learn to associate a home nest with the odors of resins, which are always present in a nest, led me to consider the possibility that the odors of wood-resins from cavities in the trunks of trees, or other wooden constructions, may play a role in attracting nest-scouts. Since it has been reported (apparently quite reliably), that honeybees will nest even in the metal boxes of water-meters, and gas-meters (where the odors of wood-resins are not expected to exist), I would, in no way, claim that the odors of wood-resins are the only odors that attract nest-scouts in nature.


----------



## power napper (Apr 2, 2005)

"First, I need to enter a CORRECTION: I reported that a loud buzzing can be heard from inside the hive hours before a swarm emerges. I thought I might have been wrong, in mentioning only hours, and Wenner's article about swarms confirmed for me that I had, indeed, erred. The loud buzzing sound starts several DAYS before the swarm emerges; which would give beekeepers plenty of time to address the situation, if they were only aware of the buzzing. This is why someone suggested arranging a system of microphones to be attached to hives, in order to alert beekeepers at home."

Rosinbio:

Mostly three to four days previous to a swarm being issued from my observation hive the bees start "rehearsing" for the event, the time is mostly around 2 pm and the buzzing is quite loud and even though being hearing impaired I can hear it, the bees run helter skelter and out the entry/exit tube and beard on the window above the opening. Placing your hand upon the glass of the Observation Hive is always an exhilirating experience for me with all the noise and vibration from the bees wings.


----------



## rosinbio (Jun 5, 2005)

To Kieck,

I can't comment about the contradiction between Wenner's claim that nest-scouts often fly ahead of the moving swarm, and , then, back to the swarm, and the belief by Beekman et al. that the scouts fly with the swarm. Beekman et al. believe that the "streakers" that fly with the swarm, mostly in the upper part of the swarm, are scouts, but the authors do not state that unequivocally. And I suspect that they could not even identify marked scouts that presumably flew in the swarm.

Wenner's claim, however, makes a lot of sense to me, because what he describes is very similar to what is known about foragers in some species of stingless bees, where the foragers guide a small group of recruits, by repeatedly flying ahead of at tiny "swarm" of recruits, and back to the "swarm", apparently guiding the "swarm" by the odors the foragers carry on their body. 

Your idea that scouts guide the swarm only visually to use direction information not from dances, but from the direction in which the scouts apparently fly ahead of the swarm, makes no sense whatsoever. Why? Because the scouts do not differ visually from any other bees in the swarm, and cannot, therefore, attract swarm-maters unless they carry attractive odors. As I had stressed before, honeybees do not dance unless there are other bees who chase after them, as a result of sensing attractive odors; which means that the scouts could never have danced in the swarm, long before the swarm takes off, unless they carried attractive odors from the cavity they had found. Scouts could not attract the swarm without odors, even by repeatedly flying ahead of the swarm, and then back to the swarm, because swarm-mates have no idea they should follow such bees. Honeybees do not have the "brains" needed to know what you know, i.e. that the scouts are flying to the new nest-site they had found. You need to discard all the anthropomorphic ideas on which you rely in your attempts to understand honeybee behavior.

Bees in a swarm that has not yet found a new nest-site, will often start constructing combs where they land temporarily. Anyone who ever captured a wild swarm temporarily resting on the branch of a tree, knows that he can often find a small comb attached to the branch where the swarm was. A swarm that has not found a new nest-site can not, however, survive outdoors for very long, when inclement weather arrives. As for swarms under the eves of houses, I can not say whether they were attracted by wood-odors, nor whether stayed there because they were unable to find a proper cavity. The site certainly provides them with some protection, but I do not know whether they can survive there indefinitely.

As far as I know the only honeybees that do not nest in cavities in nature do not belong to the species Apis mellifera. Instead, they belong to other species of the genus Apis, that live in the Far-East. Some of them nest only outdoors, on the branches of trees. I do not remember which species exactly does that. You can check the literature. But I know I have seen photos of trees with many nests even on one and the same branch.


----------



## Kieck (Dec 2, 2005)

To Ruth,

Did you look at the photos on the link I copied into my earlier post? Some of these "hives" are clearly exposed to the elements (on branches of trees, under eaves but open on all sides, etc.), all (as far as I could tell from the site) were taken in North America, and all were presumably Apis mellifera. From the amount of comb present in some of these situations, these clearly weren't temporary resting places for swarms, but established nests of bees.

Sure, such situations might not be common, but they clearly do happen.

I have known for a considerable amount of time that other species of Apis nest in exposed locations. These species also "dance," but oriented horizontally. Much of the "chasing after foragers with particular odors" that you listed as an alternative to a dance language has been hypothesised as possible evolutionary steps for developing such a "language." Apis mellifera and A. cerana are fairly unique in successfully "replacing" the sun's position with gravity, presumably because their comb is built in vertical sheets rather than horizontal sheets.

I don't know how long some of the exposed hives of A. mellifera can survive in such locations, but the photos show considerable amounts of comb, so the bees were clearly there for a fair amount of time.


----------



## Kieck (Dec 2, 2005)

http://www.beesource.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=000917#000003

Here's another thread about bees starting hives in exposed locations. Likely very few of these hives survive in northern climates, but some might make it in the southern U.S.


----------



## BULLSEYE BILL (Oct 2, 2002)

Last year I removed three colonys that were outside. One on the ground under bushes, one in a tree, and another very large one that was under an eve on the NW side of the building and had survived for more than two years there. They all looked like the same bugs to me  I need to get those pictures uploaded to my site I guess.


----------



## rosinbio (Jun 5, 2005)

To Kieck,

It is simply INCORRECT that bees of Apis species that nest in the open always orient their dances horizontally. They are known to dance also on non-horizontal surfaces.

A. mellifera & cerana, are NOT at all unique in the ability to change from direction in relation to light to direction in relation to gravity. The phenomenon was, in fact, first discovered in a species of beetles. See, among others, v. Frisch's 1967 book.

Whatever ideas those who believe in the existence of the honeybee DL might have about how the DL could have evolved, do not interest me at all. I have never seen any valid experimental confirmation for the existence of the honeybee DL. Instead, I have seen what I consider more than enough experimental evidence against the existence of the honeybee DL. Conjectures about how the honeybee DL evolved, without any experimental evidence for the existence of such a DL, means "putting the cart before the horses". I adamantly refuse to waste any more time over such conjectures, or over the DL hypothesis. If you still believe that honeybees may have a DL, you worry about it. [admin edit]

As for swarms of A. mellifera nesting out in the open, I guess it all swarm will find an unoccupied cavity that is appropriate for a nest. The natural environment does not have an almost endless supply of such cavities. Depending on the climate, one cannot rule out the possibility that a swarm that found no cavity in which to nest, and established a nest outdoors, where it stopped to rest, might be able to survive for years.

[ February 22, 2006, 09:10 AM: Message edited by: Admin ]


----------



## rosinbio (Jun 5, 2005)

To Kieck,

I noticed that a portion of the last paragraph in my previous message had been accidentally deleted.

It should read as follows:

As for swarms of A. mellifera that nest out in the open, I guess it is quite reasonable to assume that not all swarms will find a cavity appropriate for a nest...


----------



## Kieck (Dec 2, 2005)

My goodness! I believe you're reading words into my posts that I never put into my sentences. For instance, I never said, "bees of Apis species that nest in the open ALWAYS [emphasis mine] orient their dances horizontally." I know I did not throw the word "always" into my statement, simply because I knew that some individuals might "dance" on vertical planes or on planes at other angles. I would NOT say, either, that members of A. mellifera "always" dance on a vertical plane.

But bees of species that typically build exposed combs usually "dance" on a roughly horizontal plane. Bees of species (A. mellifera and A. cerana) that typically build comb in cavities usually "dance" on a roughly vertical plane. That much has been documented many, many times, and it's simply that -- nothing more said about the purpose or the reasons for the "dances," just that they occur and the orientation of these "dances" changes based on the exposure of the comb.

Similarly, I did not write that "A. mellifera & cerana are. . . unique in the ability to change from direction in relation to light to direction in relation to gravity." Instead, I wrote that the two species are "fairly" unique in their conversion from light to gravity. I don't know of any other species of Apis that shows a similar replacement, do you? Doesn't that make them unique in the genus?

Also, you've repeatedly said that beetles also switch from one to the other. I've looked, but I haven't been able to find similar behavior documented for beetles, particularly behavior in which individuals orient in relation to the position of the sun, then "replay" that orientation but substitute gravity for the position of the sun. Which beetles use this behavior, and in what sorts of circumstances?

Finally, please note that I did not say that the switch from sun to gravity was the explanation for the dance language, or that the behaviors you listed as explanations for the "dances" of bees were in fact evolutionary steps in the development of a dance language. I wrote that the series of behaviors have been hypothesised as possible evolutionary steps in the development of a "dance language." Hypothesised, not given as evidence. There is a difference.

But I digress. Now, how could bees originating from a wooden hive determine that a water meter (or a similar cavity of completely different consistency that their wooden cavity) would make a suitable hive? And, how would the scents brought back to a swarm on a scout that initially found a water meter differ from other "earth" scents in the area around the water meter?


----------



## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

[ February 28, 2006, 12:22 PM: Message edited by: sqkcrk ]


----------



## Joel (Mar 3, 2005)

Mark, we like Ruth, she's turning out to be quite and interesting poster and besides, aren't you supposed to be in SC???!!!


----------



## rosinbio (Jun 5, 2005)

To Kieck,

The transposition "from light to gravity" & vice versa, has to do with a directional source of light; sun, or no sun. I said the behavior was first discovered a beetle. I urged you to look it up in v. Frisch's 1967 book. You should have had the decency to do just that, instead of pestering me with silly comments about it.

When foragers of A. cerana dance on an incline plane, they too are affected by that "transposition".

You say you were referring to a hypothetical evolution of a hypothetical DL? I said over and over again that, as far as I am concerned, the DL hypothesis was stillborn more than 80 years ago. So, just, stop pestering me about it! 

I do not know what odors might attract nest-scouts to a meter-box , but the scouts learned that a home-nest has a narrow opening, so they inspect sources of attractive odors that have a narrow opening. The ground around the box does not have narrow openings, and does not necessarily have the same odors as the ground inside the box. Swarm-mates are attracted by the same odors that attracted the nest-scouts, and that become adsorbed onto the scouts' body-hair, as a result of spending time in the cavity. 

I said I will not respond to any further comments, or questions from you, and this time I intend to stick to that decision.


----------



## FordGuy (Jul 10, 2005)

all this debate makes me feel like I am home again...

but I left home to live here at Beesource.

and yeah, I thought you were coming to SC to buy me some BBQ?


----------



## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

[ February 28, 2006, 12:25 PM: Message edited by: sqkcrk ]


----------



## db_land (Aug 29, 2003)

All this talk about BBQ is making me hungry









Ruth, 
Last year I removed bee colonies from the following "cavities":
1) Combs hanging from the underside of a large oak tree limb;
2) Trapped out of a double brick wall (brick-concrete block-brick layers);
3) Combs hanging from the rafters in a large house attic (a "cavity" of hundreds of cubic yards);
4) An all metal mail box.
I also heard of bee removals from an old abandoned VW beetle, from a large tractor/truck tire. None of these colony locations had anything in common in terms of odor, material, height, entrance size, cavity size or shape. 
Clearly, bees are very adaptable to environmental conditions. The only consistent nest location criteria seem to be dry and defensible (although the open tree comb nest belies this I believe the bees were making the best out of their bad situation).


----------



## Kieck (Dec 2, 2005)

To Ruth,

"The transposition "from light to gravity" & vice versa, has to do with a directional source of light; sun, or no sun. I said the behavior was first discovered a beetle. I urged you to look it up in v. Frisch's 1967 book. You should have had the decency to do just that, instead of pestering me with silly comments about it." -Ruth Rosin

Sorry. I've tried. I did some more looking in von Frisch's 1967 book today. I can't find any example of a beetle that navigates by the position of the sun, then "replays" that method of navigation while substituting gravity for the position of the sun. I can't find anything along the same lines, except replacing "sun" with "directional light" either. I CAN find references to using two methods of orientation (light and gravity) at different times, but nothing in which one is substituted for the other during a "replay." Help me out here -- where in the book is the reference to this example that I've asked about? I know you've told me a few times that such an example is in the book, but I can't seem to find it.


----------



## rosinbio (Jun 5, 2005)

To Kieck,

Look up Geotrupes, which is the genus of the beetle in question. The "transposition" has nothing to do with "raplays". It occurs even without any "replays". It occurs in ants, and it occurs in honeybees also outside te dance!


----------



## rosinbio (Jun 5, 2005)

To db_land,

Very interesting information. And I do not question at least that to which you yourself testify. The rafters at least had wood-odors.

As I said, I know that a swarm which is obliged to stay for a while where it rested, that would have regular;y been only a temporary resting site, often start building a comb. And I can easily imagine that if the scouts can not find a proper cavity for a nest, the swarm will stay where it landed, and build more combs, until the inner combs become pretty well protected by the outer ones, and the whole construction adsorbs colony odors, and the bees accept it as a nest.

I assume that not all swarms succeed in finding an unoccupied cavity that is proper for a nest, in the trunk of a tree. What the scouts will then do, I do not know. Maybe with the passage of time the scouts lose memory of the odors they had learned to associate with the home-nest, and start inspecting just any hole that lead to a space without such odors. I am definitely doing nothing other than CONJECTURING here. No one has ever even begun to investigate the issue, let alone investigate it thoroughly.


----------



## Jim Fischer (Jan 5, 2001)

Yet another long, hectoring exercise in unexamined
unoriginalism...

OK, by the numbers, swarm traps made from molded
pressed paper are commonly used in experiments,
and they (when not "baited" with any sort of
"swarm lure") certainly don't smell different,
let alone like ANYTHING with which a bee might be
familiar. Studies have shown over and over again
that cavity size is the primary criteria by which
scouts pick a new hive location for a swarm, and
odors (if any are used to tempt the bees) have
little or nothing to do with it. Sure, swarm
lures can HELP, but nothing will help a too-large
or too-small cavity.


----------



## rosinbio (Jun 5, 2005)

To Kieck,

Let's make one thing clear: The dance is not a "replay" of the foragers' flight from the hive to its feeder, as you assume, nor a miniaturization of that flight (as O'Dea from Australia assumed in print, years ago), and neither your groundless assumption, or O'Dea's groundless assumption, can make the dance become what you assume it to be.

When the dance is performed out in the open on the horizontal landing platform in front of the hive-opening, the waggle-run may SEEM to be pointing towards the food. But the direction is simply a compensation for the after-effects of the flight on the foragers'-eyes, and it is directed in the direction of the REVERSE of the forager's flight from the food back to the hive; which normally coincides with the direction to the food. The after-effects on the eyes, of the flight to the food, have long disappeared by then. The speed of the dance, which affects the duration of the waggle-run (greater dancing-speed, faster turn in, and out of the waggle-run, which means shorter waggle-run), does not depend on the forager's flight to the food. It does depend on the expenditure of energy during flight, as v. Frisch concluded, but not at all the way v. Frisch concluded that dependence to be. Under the most common experimental situation (feeder, not extraordinarily far from the hive, filled with enough sugar-solution to enable many foragers to repeatedly fill their honey-sacs there for a couple of hours), the foragers rest while feeding at the feeder, and also "refuel" (renew their energy resources), there. All the after-effects of the flight from the hive to the food, in terms of physiological exhaustion, and depletion of energy, therefore, completely disappear by the time the forager prepares to fly back to the hive, and distance-indication in the dance depends only on the forager's flight from the food back to the hive; which is what Khalifman (1950) claimed in Pchelovodstvo. This means that when the foragers carry a heavy load, like pollen, that can weigh almost as much as the bees own body-weight, the distance they indicate in their dances is very misleading for recruits, who need to fly unloaded from the hive to the food. Never mind that it is misleading, even merely due to the fact that, in fairly constant wind-conditions, when the forager flies back to the hive, it flies in a wind that has exactly the reverse direction in relation to the direction of the flight, than it is expected to have for a recruit that needs to fly in the opposite direction. 

Incidentally, when the foragers feed at the feeder, each one of them may face in a different direction. But the effects of the after-effects on the foragers'-eyes due to the direction they face during feeding, disappear long before they return to the hive, as do the earlier after-effects on the eyes of the flight to the food.

All these problems pose very serious difficulties for DL supporters. They pose no difficulties whatsoever for honeybee-recruits, simply because there has never been any valid experimental confirmation for the claim that recruits use any distance & direction information contained in foragers'-dances; and, there has been, instead, only very strong experimental confirmation, coming from many different directions, against any such claim.

What more do you need?

Enough is enough! Sorry, but I do not want to hear anything more about any problems with which YOU may still be struggling, regarding the DL hypothesis, or honeybee-dances, after you make utterly groundless assumptions, and then draw utterly groundless conclusions based on your utterly groundless assumptions!


----------



## rosinbio (Jun 5, 2005)

Hi to All those interested,

I repeatedly stated that there is no doubt in my mind that (contrary to the belief of DL supporters), honeybees never decide when to dance. The dance results only as bees try to escape from nest-mates, or swarm-mates, who chase after those bees, because they are attracted by odors those bees are carrying.

I think I need to explain that my statement is not based on any arbitrary whim, but on well known experimental data that can not be explained otherwise. I think v. Frisch was the first one to carry out such experiments.

At any rate, you train two groups of foragers (with the same number of bees in each group), each to a different feeder with the same food-odor, but at a different site (in a regular environment, at about the same distance from the hive, with wind-direction not giving preference to either feeder). As long as the sugar-concentration in both feeders is identical, foragers from both groups dance at about the same frequency. However, if you now decrease the concentration of sugar in one feeder, and increase it in the other feeder (each group of foragers continues to forage at its own feeder, as before), but the foragers that now bring in food of poorer quality, dance less often than before, and the foragers that bring in richer food, now dance more often than before. And you can easily reverse the situation, by reversing the concentration of sugar at the two feeders.

The foragers in one group have no way of knowing whether the food they carry is richer, or poorer than the food carried by foragers from the other group. The effect can only be explained if both groups of foragers carry the same food-odor, but different natural locale-odors; which honeybees, with their exceptionally high sensitivity to odors, can easily sense. 

It is dance-attendants in the hive, who received food from dancers of both groups (and might have left the hive after each dance-attendance, found nothing, and returned to the hive to attend another dance), who quickly learn which combination of the identical food-odor and the specific natural locale-odors, is associated with foragers that bring in richer food. Potential dance-attendants, thus begin to chase more often after the foragers whose odor-combination has become more attractive to those potential dance-attendants. 

This, then, increases the frequency of dancing of the foragers that bring in richer food, and decreases the frequency of dancing of the foragers that bring in poorer food.


----------



## rosinbio (Jun 5, 2005)

Two more points about swarms:

1. According to Wenner's ABJ article about honeybee-swarms, swarms of Africanized honeybees may even invade a nest occupied by another honeybee colony, stay there for a while, and then leave.

2. I stated that no one knows what nest-scouts do, and how they behave if they are unable to find a cavity suitable for a nest in the trunk of a tree. 

This may, however, be related to the problem concerning food-scouts. It is well-known that when food is needed in the hive, but the foragers cannot find anymore food-bearing flowers of the species on which they foraged, and there are no other groups of foragers in the hive, who are foraging on flowers of different species, to recruit them to those flowers, the foragers start scouting for food. As a result, they may find new food-bearing flowers, on which bees in that colony had never foraged before. No one knows how the scouts do that, and what might attract them. And no one even attempted to study that, because it is going to be very difficult to investigate.


----------



## Kieck (Dec 2, 2005)

"But the direction is simply a compensation for the after-effects of the flight on the foragers'-eyes, and it is directed in the direction of the REVERSE of the forager's flight from the food back to the hive; which normally coincides with the direction to the food." -Ruth Rosin

Interesting. Do you know, then, whether bees express this compensation when they arrive at the resources? Do they turn back toward the hive (or the direction from which they arrived) to compensate for the after-effects of the flight?

And, even granting that "dances" are not miniaturizations of the actual flights, how does substituting gravity for light compensate for the after-effects of the flight when bees "dance" inside hives?

The way I read the whole controversy (not just scouts leading swarms, but the whole "dance language" debate), fervent opponents of a "dance language" claim that honey bees can locate food by odor alone. The arguments are compelling; bees seem to be able to locate resources by odor alone. (But I assumed that before I ever began reading the arguments presented by opponents of dance-language hypotheses.) The question, in my mind, remains: do honey bees ONLY find food by odor? What about color or vision? Could they be using some other form of communication?

Opponents of a dance language also point out the numerous ad hoc hypotheses that have been added to von Frisch's original hypothesis to make it work. They point out (rightly so, perhaps) that we need to accept the simplest explanation for any situation (parsimony, Morgan's Canon, Occam's Razor, whatever you wish to call it), and clearly all the ad hoc hypotheses violate parsimony.

But at the same time, opponents of a dance language present various ad hoc hypotheses to explain away all versions of dance-language hypotheses. These conjectures are just as numerous as the ad hoc hypotheses presented by supporters of dance-language hypotheses.

And, "odor hypotheses" still do not serve as the null hypotheses in experiments testing "dance-language hypotheses." A real test of a dance-language hypothesis would set up a null hypothesis (honey bees do not use a "dance language") and an alternate hypothesis (honey bees use a "dance language").

"What more do you need?" -Ruth Rosin

Data! Not from a "dance-language supporter," not from a "dance-language opponent," just real, solid data. If you want me to believe something, give me some solid evidence (not just arguments). If you want me to disbelieve something, give me some solid evidence directly contradicting the original belief.


----------



## buckbee (Dec 2, 2004)

>Data! Not from a "dance-language supporter," not from a "dance-language opponent," just real, solid data.

Yep - nail on the head. Trouble is, you may as well ask a Jehovah's Witness for evidence that the Bible is true. When it's a matter of religion (which it seems to be with PP) you ain't gonna get any closer to the truth - just be bombarded with more unfounded assertions. It's just not worth the effort, IMO.


----------



## rosinbio (Jun 5, 2005)

To Kieck,

[edit by admin]

You know perfectly well that when trained foragers fly to their feeder, or to flowers of the species on which they forage, or when guard-bees fly at you and try to sting you, they do not turn around every now and then in order to "compensate". 

You aught to know that when honeybees feed from a food-dish, each one faces in a different direction, because I pointed that out in a very recent post. But you cannot figure out from this, that such bees are, more often than not, trained foragers that all arrived at the dish from the direction of the hive. But they face in a direction that enables them to reach the food. And since such a bee can never occupy a position already occupied by another bee, it inevitably ends up reaching the food by facing in another direction than the other bee. Maybe you do not even know that food-dishes used in experiments are always round; which means that no two bees can feed there by facing in the same direction at one and the same time. Obviously, honeybees do not "compensate" for the after-effects of light on their eyes, when they need to do something else that is very specific. however, not "compensate" when they need to do something else that is very specific.

Before you presume to deal with the behavior of honeybee-recruits, you aught to know that there is more than enough evidence that they know nothing about any visual properties of any source visited by the foragers. It takes an incredible combination [edit by admin] to presume to deal with any scientific issue without first studying everything that is already known about it.

You believe you understand the Law of Parsimony, and you even presume to use it, when you obviously understand nothing about it. The Law of Parsimony requires you to accept the simplest explanation that suffices to explain the data. This means, to avoid even bothering with more complex explanation, when you already have a simpler sufficient explanation.

You know that flying insects in general find sources of attractive odors in the field by use of odor alone all along. You know that honeybees can use odor alone all along to find sources of attractive odors in the field, even when they can have no information about the location of any such sources. This is how nest-scouts find prospective nest-sites. And we know that they carry from such a site, on their bodies, back to the swarm the odors that attracted them to that site in the first place, and therefore are also attractive to swarm-mates. I explained that honeybees do not decide when to dance, and that they dance only when trying to escape from other bees who chase after them because they carry odors that are attractive to those other bees.

So there is no need to explain how honeybee-recruits find, in the field, food with their foragers' food-odor, to which the foragers are not flying, in any more complicated explanation, other than use of odor alone all along. This, in turn, should have led you to exclude any more complex explanation, based on other means of communication for which there isn't the slightest evidence. Nonetheless, you cannot get out of your mind the idea (for which there is no need, and no evidence), that recruits may use other means of communication? Why don't you consider the possibility that recruits are guided by invisible & inaudible tiny fairies, that reside under the foragers'-wings, and jump from under the wing, to attach themselves to dance-attendants, when the forager dances, and vibrates its wings during the waggle-run?

[edit by admin]

[ February 23, 2006, 09:11 PM: Message edited by: Admin ]


----------



## Kieck (Dec 2, 2005)

To Ruth,

I don't see where I'm "losing links" in this chain of logical arguments.

I'll start at the back, and work toward the front. Just reverse the "links" if you'd rather reason through it the other way around.

Honey bees' "dances" indicate the direction of the resources because the bees are compensating for the after-effects of light. (This was/is your argument for the direction component of the "dances." I questioned how effects of gravity might compensate for the after effects of light, but I'll just leave that alone for the time being.)

The compensation for the after-effects of light occurs because the bees are returning from relatively long flights. (Presumably, the bees feel some "need" to "zero out" the effects of light.)

The flights back to the hive are away from resources.

The resources are at some distance from the hive.

The foragers/scouts had to fly to the resources in the first place.

The position of the resources is relatively fixed; in other words, the flight to the resources was just as long as the flight from the resources to the hive.

The "after-effects" of light would be the same, regardless of whether the bees are headed back toward the hive or away from the hive. How could they not be?

Therefore, the bees should "compensate" for the "after-effects" of light when they reach resources, just as they would when they reach the hive.

You said the bees do NOT need to "compensate" when they have something else specific to do. Wouldn't storing the nectar in cells be "specific?" What about avoiding the "chasing" bees? Why wouldn't these tasks overcome the need to "compensate" for the effects of light?

"Why don't you consider the possibility that recruits are guided by invisible & inaudible tiny fairies, that reside under the foragers'-wings, and jump from under the wing, to attach themselves to dance-attendants, when the forager dances, and vibrates its wings during the waggle-run?" -Ruth Rosin

Are you proposing this form of "communication?"  

Seriously, though, you don't know why I can't get it through my head that bees may use other means of communication? I'll try to make it clear -- I don't see using the "odor" hypothesis as the null hypothesis as a reliable method of testing!

Besides that, what really eliminates the possibility that bees use other forms of communication than odor? To my thinking, bees may use multiple forms of communication, including or not a "dance language." Just the variety of sounds produced by bees at various times suggests that information is contained in the sounds. Now, can the bees successfully interpret those sounds? I don't know, but I won't rule it out at this time without some data.


----------



## PaulR (May 24, 2005)

FordGuy: Are you saying that the bee is using her feet to stamp out a vibrational signal(Morse bee code)?, they can't hear but they can pickup virbration(or vibration that is sound generated?).


----------



## Dan Williamson (Apr 6, 2004)

>>You simply never learned to think straight, and be able to keep in mind a long chain of logical arguments without losing links in the process. 

>>This is why I urged you to spend several years just solving problems in math & geometry, in order to learn to think logically, before you presume to dabble in science.

Here we go insulting people again. Ruth cannot limit her discussions to opinion and facts about the topic at hand without resorting to personal insults. When will it stop?


----------



## buckbee (Dec 2, 2004)

>When will it stop?

It won't stop while there is breath in her body. She has one idea in her head and nobody is going to disagree with her without getting a mouthful of abuse, as she clearly thinks everyone else in the known universe is intellectually inferior to herself.

With any luck, she will realise that (almost) nobody is listening and go back to her - well, I nearly said 'research', but she doesn't appear to actually do any, just rubbishes everyone else's.

Perhaps if we all just tiptoe out of the room, she can just rant to herself?


----------



## buckbee (Dec 2, 2004)

>
Your problem is that both of you are arrogant ignoramuses.

>ignorant "punks" like you

I think you made it out just before you were banned. Don't hurry back.


----------



## Dan Williamson (Apr 6, 2004)

Good riddance.

I like to see a good debate. I like to hear opinions. I like it that we don't all agree. It helps us to be critical thinkers. 

Insults and personal attacks are just not necessary or justified.


----------



## Kieck (Dec 2, 2005)

Oops. I believe I've seriously offended someone here (maybe others, too, who just haven't posted their opinions). I apologize for any offense I may have caused -- I certainly intended no offense. I had and still have questions about the controversy that I'd like answered, but no one seems willing or able in this thread (and, just for clarification, those questions involve both the "odor hypotheses" and the "dance-language hypotheses").

I initially used the term "solid data" in this thread without realizing that the term apparently has been defined by others? Opponents of a dance language in honey bees criticize the data that von Frisch and others have collected because they argue that the experiments fail to control against bees relying only on odor or locate resources. To me, then, those data are not "solid." The data are open to criticism, making them "shaky." I said I wanted "solid data." I still do -- I'd like to see some data that clearly indicates whether or not bees can and do use the information contained in the "dances" of other bees.

Ruth is correct in saying that data are open to interpretation. What I'd like to do is interpret the data for myself.

"I am well aware that most members of this forum are not scientists. They do not understand what science is all about." -Ruth Rosin

I am also aware that most members of this forum are not trained scientists. I do believe, however, that most members of this forum DO understand what science is all about. From what I've read in various threads on this board, the members, as a whole, are well-informed, observant, and keenly interested particularly in all aspects of beekeeping. I have never believed, nor do I believe now, that science should be the realm of an elite few. We all use science everyday, and, to some extent, we all conduct our own "research." The experiments may not be formal, or fully controlled, or widely significant, but they still constitute "research."

As far as members of this forum understanding the research of others, if "scientists" can't make their work understandable to the "masses," why should we (as taxpayers and as members of society) continue to support them?

"Re the DL controversy, there are only 2 possibilities. Either recruits use odor alone all along, or they use information contained in foragers'-dances about the approximate site visited by the foragers, and supplement that (when necessary), with a phase where they search for attractive odors "nearby", i.e. a phase where they use odor alone all along!" -Ruth Rosin

What if both hypotheses are wrong? What if bees only rely on visual cues to find resource? What if they use something no one has even suggested yet? What if they use a combination of methods, either just a combination of the two proposed here, or a combination more methods? Why should we arbitrarily eliminate all the other possibilities?

I know from personal experience (and from reading the works of others) that bumble bees and honey bees show strong preferences for certain colors. That indicates to me that some of the searching takes place visually, not through odor alone.

"I did not, of course, bring up the "little fairies" story as a serious scientific explanation. I brought it up only as the kind of scientific explanation that you, Kieck, should consider, because it is just as preposterous as other scientific explanations you still insist on seriously considering." -Ruth Rosin

Yep. I caught that. Did you notice the little, yellow, smiley guy behind my response to that? I knew it wasn't a serious suggestion, and I never took it seriously. I'm not sure yet why a language hypothesis among bees is "preposterous." I know I've been accused on this thread of anthropomorphism; perhaps I do give other animals too much credit at times. I fear "anthrocentrism" as much or more than anthropomorphism, though. Humans are still animals, after all, so assuming that no other animals can approach the behaviors we exhibit might be just as faulty as assuming that other animals can do everything humans do.

So, having said all that (if anyone else out there is still bothering to read all of this), I'll leave this one alone for now. Until someone comes along with some fresh evidence (data and interpretations, not just criticisms or hypothetical arguments) one way or the other on the whole "dance-language controversy," I don't see much point to bantering and conjecturing about the possibilities.


----------



## Dan Williamson (Apr 6, 2004)

Kieck,

I had no problem with you... 

But using terms such as "punk" and "arrogant ignoramuses" both written by Ruth is just behavior that frankly irritates me. 

This is Barry's site and he can keep people or ban people as he sees fit. I have no say in the matter. I was just voicing my dislike for that kind of behavior. Thinking it and saying it are two different things.


----------



## BULLSEYE BILL (Oct 2, 2002)

>I think you made it out just before you were banned.

How so you KNOW she is banned? I'm sure going to miss all the verbal abuse.  However it was unfortunate that all thet 'straight thinking' would not let the neuances of senceability shed any light on the process.

>Until someone comes along with some fresh evidence (data and interpretations, not just criticisms or hypothetical arguments)...

There is an article in the latest ABJ on page 242 if you would like to read it. Personally, I just read this thread for the comic entertainment. I really hate it when something gets edited before I get to read it.


----------



## buckbee (Dec 2, 2004)

Kieck,
No problem with you at all - I'm impressed you took all that abuse for so long without biting back. I agree with you about science not being the realm of the few and about scientists obligation to communicate effectively. That was PP's big problem - her inability to communicate with intelligent laymen without resort to abuse, which utterly destroyed her credibility.

BB,
I don't know whether or not she was banned, but my guess is that Barry wouldn't easily overlook her last onslaught, having already warned her. 

Now then, I'm sure I had some bees around here someplace...


----------



## Jim Fischer (Jan 5, 2001)

> I don't know whether or not she was banned

Well, I haven't seen any celebrating Munchkins
or Winged Monkeys with my own eyes yet, but a
check of a certain user's profile reveals a
reset to "house bee" status, and also no "recent
posts" are listed on that profile.

Offhand, I'd conclude that someone DID drop
a house on the user at issue.


----------



## Jim Williamson (Feb 16, 2006)

Ding Dong!


----------



## Keith Benson (Feb 17, 2003)

Wow - turn off beesource to watch curling for a few nights and I missed the much predicted and awaited flame-out.

Ah well, where's my 44 poound rock . . . 

Keith


----------



## Joel (Mar 3, 2005)

And so ends another chapter in the postings of Ruth! She will dissappear back into the deepest recesses of Bee-L and other more educated posts depriving us of her sharp wit and intensely defended scientific opinions. Spring will come eventually and like the tree frogs and daffodils she will again return to stomp, kick and verbally thrash us into teary laughter, at least for a time.

I think we all learned something, once again.


----------



## George Fergusson (May 19, 2005)

Thank you Joel for that lovely perspective.


----------



## Keith Benson (Feb 17, 2003)

Joel - not so deep, she is back in action on Bee-L at this moment. No need to miss her, just fire up your email.

Keith


----------



## SilverFox (Apr 25, 2003)

Does it really make a difference how the bees communicate? As long as they can find necture and pollen I'm happy







.


----------



## buckbee (Dec 2, 2004)

Silverfox,

Now why didn't you say that a week ago? It could have saved us all a lot of trouble.  

It would have gotten you some abuse, though!


----------



## SilverFox (Apr 25, 2003)

LOL  Hoped someone else would say it first.

 ABUSE  

Who would ever want to do that to little 'ol me??

[ February 25, 2006, 03:44 PM: Message edited by: SilverFox ]


----------



## George Fergusson (May 19, 2005)

Yup, Ruth has surfaced on BEE-L and is firing her torpedoes at the recent radar-tracking study. It will be interesting to see what happens over there- BEE-L has been rather entertaining lately but Ruth might get things really hopping.

It is reassuring to know that she is apparently none the worse for wear after thrashing us Beesourcerers.


----------



## FordGuy (Jul 10, 2005)

Paul, actually your thougt about them drumming up a morse code was way beyond my narrow mindedness, but I think it's a brilliant notion. I really don't know, I was suggesting that sound may play a role, maybe a significant role. The thing about how bees can't hear, I did not know that....but are we sure? makes you wonder why queens would pipe if there isno bee to hear it. Interesting conversation. Thanks!


----------



## buckbee (Dec 2, 2004)

...and don't forget the possibility of them sending semaphore signals with their antennae.  

But wait a minute - this is a good point. The conventional view is that bees cannot hear in the usual sense of the word, so why would queens pipe? Or can only queens hear? Or can they only 'hear' as imagos not yet emerged from their cells?

Maybe this should be a new thread?


----------



## Jim Fischer (Jan 5, 2001)

Bees *can* hear airborne sounds.

See here.
http://www.beesource.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=004745;p=1#000004

(Or is that "see, *HEAR*"?)


----------



## Keith Benson (Feb 17, 2003)

"Yup, Ruth has surfaced on BEE-L and is firing her torpedoes at the recent radar-tracking study."

And her torpedoes are directly contradicted by Gavin. I need to see that paper - Gavin made it sound pertty darn cool.

Anyone ahve a PDF they can email me?

Keith


----------



## George Fergusson (May 19, 2005)

Drobbins has been able to get me a few papers from subscription based services. I'll ask him about this one.

One link I found included the graphs showing the flight paths of the bees- not the whole paper, but more than the abstract. I'll see if I can find that link.

Found it:

http://acp.eugraph.com/news/news05/riley.html

I've emailed Dave about the actual paper.

[ February 26, 2006, 11:41 AM: Message edited by: George Fergusson ]


----------



## Jim Fischer (Jan 5, 2001)

Here's the full text of the "letter" (not a full-blown paper, but irrelevant to laypeople)

http://www.neurobiologie.fu-berlin.de/menzel/Pub_AGmenzel/Riley,Greggers,Smith,Reynolds,Menzel_Nature_2005.pdf


----------



## Keith Benson (Feb 17, 2003)

Danke. 

Keith


----------



## Bee Man (Sep 19, 2004)

While everyone here is discussing their vocabulary, please email us your info if you wish to be listed on our beekeepers page for folks catching swarms. www.eBeeHoney.com

Thanks,
Becky


----------



## Barry (Dec 28, 1999)

-----
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2006 09:42:32 -0700
Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology
From: Jerry Bromenshenk


Everyone has part of the concept right, but the full answer is not in -- 
for some very good reasons.


First, some background:

I know Joe Riley, got DARPA to fly him over for a tracking workshop in TX, 
then had him up to MT. He has some interesting data. The best is the 
foraging data by larger bees wearing smaller (fragile) tags (i.e., 
bumblebees). These bees were left to free forage -- no targets, syrup, 
etc. And the data shows things that one might expect -- bumblebees will 
follow topographic features such as a line left by mowing of fields/meadows.

Much of the honey bee work was done with a bee carrying a number disc to 
which was ADDED a tracking chip and vertical antenna. The weight is 
significant, much less the aerodynamics of the whole things.

We've also flown chips on bees. And we've tracked bees with lasers -- no 
chips at all.

Bottom line, carrying a large device with a vertical OR trailing antenna is 
tricky -- we gave up on our own chips -- decided that the chips had too 
much effect on bee flight -- it limits their ability to turn, etc. And 
grabbing them to put the things on is EXTREMELY disruptive.

So we now track bees without using anything attached to the bee.

Our laser maps of bees searching for targets by odor can be seen online 
(Optics Express 13 5853). Look for all of the articles by Joe Shaw on the 
use of LIDAR and lasers.

The LIDAR used in the published trials is big, expensive, and non-eye 
safe. It also can't distinguish one small moving thing from another -- a 
seed head on a blade of grass moving in the wind from a flying insect.

We've now got new, far smaller, eye-safe systems that are being tested at 
the moment. These have two years of R&D in them already. They work -- and 
most importantly, the new systems see bees and ONLY bees. Anything else, 
small or large, moving or static does not appear in the imaging.

We'll be field testing prototypes for commercialization this summer.

In addition, we have several years of data that demonstrate that the 
sensitivity of the olfactory system of a bee is in the same ball park as 
that of a dog, and that there are many similarities. Both can generalize 
to a suite of related substances, when trained on a common component. Both 
can detect a broad array of chemicals -- for bees, its not just pheromones 
and floral scents. And, most importantly, NO ONE knows just how good the 
olfactory sensitivity of either the bee or the dog is. Why? Because we 
don't have instruments as good! We have to collect samples for long 
periods to get enough material for detection (often several minutes up to 
1/2 hr). The bees and dogs instantly recognize odors at the same levels.

So, in the case of our Ft Leonard Wood trials, bees could find all 
explosives by searching for the odor of DNT, even though that wasn't the 
main ingredient of some of the things that were buried. MEASURED vapor 
levels directly ABOVE the buried landmine(s) were in the order of 5-15 
parts per trillion -- determined by collected 30 minute vapor samples -- so 
that's an average. Also, keep in mind, landmines don't have any reward AND 
our conditioning occurs at the hive, not in the field. I for one have no 
interest in strolling through mine fields to look for bees.

Both our video and the lasers show bees locking on and tracking odor plume 
from these vapor sources from many yards away. That means, using even the 
most conservative plume models, that the bees were recognizing vapor trails 
in the parts per quadrillion or less.

Now, if these huge numbers (actually incredibly small amounts, its the 
ratio of target odor to air volume that are so large) are hard to grasp, go 
to the MegaPenny Project Site for illustrations that put this into 
perspective http://www.kokogiak.com/megapenny/

Ok, so we know bees can detect all kinds of odors at VERY LOW levels. Now, 
under an Army Contract to our private company, we've been working on bee 
behavioral responses to very low concentrations of potentially harmful 
chemicals (but we're working at concentrations below the lethal level to 
bees). The results have been amazing -- so much so that we've filed for 
patent. We've found that bees respond in LESS than 30 seconds to a large 
array (we're still working to find the limits) of chemicals. But, here's 
the reason we've gone to patenting. When exposed, in less than 30 
seconds, we get an ALARM that the event has happened AND we get a 
signature that is chemical specific. In other words, the bees can tell us 
what the chemical was.

Now, as per painting bees, gluing things on with adhesives that volatize 
off solvents, etc. -- since the bees are SO sensitive to vapors, you can 
more or less fry their olfactory system (overload it), at least for the 
short term.

So, here's the rub. Their olfactory systems respond to levels of chemicals 
that we can't measure (at least not in the short time interval that a bee 
can detect them). These chemicals have profound effects on their 
behavior. This we have on solid evidence -- hundreds of trials, all sorts 
of chemicals, chemical sampling with conventional instruments run in parallel.

We also are convinced (and we can't fully answer this conjecture until we 
have the new lasers and some serious field time with them) that hanging 
anything on a bee may drastically alter bee flight, including orientation.

And, our bias is that any use of a food reward - near the area that you 
think that a dance might be sending bees- invalidates the experiment. We 
use food as a reward, but at the hive. (Well, within a few yards of 
it). If the dance is sending foragers out to the food source -- they 
should all end up at the feeder dish beside the hive. There's no food 
anywhere near the things that we get them to search for. Why would the 
dance send them to a non-producing 'food' source.

And finally, the probability that one of our trained bees will find any 
target emitting a NON-FOOD odor in the parts per billion vapor range is 
greater than 99%. At parts per trillion, its usually better than 
95-98%. Even if the dance helps, we'd only get a few % points 
improvement. For all of our work, 90% or more of the discovery of these 
unconventional targets (no food and not an odor that you'd expect bees to 
be able to discriminate) relies on odor and odor alone. And our reward 
dispensing feeder are NEVER near the targets. The dance, if it does what 
people contend, should be working against us. We should be seeing all of 
the bees at our conditioning trays, if they were being directed by a 
dance. Why look elsewhere?

Jerry

P.S. What does the dance do? Frankly, I don't know. But I do know, the 
bees don't need it to direct foraging.


----------



## Jim Fischer (Jan 5, 2001)

Jerry seems to be offering the very unique work done in 
landmine detection (where there is no actual nectar to 
bring back to the hive and dance about), as some sort of
rebuttal to the radar-tracking done with feeders (where 
there IS nectar to be brought back to the hive and dance about).

I will attempt to explain why Jerry's data is absolutely correct 
within the specific and highly artificial conditions of his work, 
but only within those artificial conditions. As such, Jerry's 
work cannot be the basis for conclusions about how bees act under
more "normal" conditions, where there is actual foraging with 
rewards to be done, rather than nothing but the empty promises 
offered by Jerry to his bees.

> Bottom line, carrying a large device with a vertical OR trailing 
> antenna... And grabbing them to put the things on is EXTREMELY 
> disruptive.

But in the radar study at issue, what data is indicative of 
disruption? It would appear that, despite the physical burden of 
the diodes, the bees still flew with clear purpose, amazingly in 
compliance with dance vectors, even when being "fooled" by being 
released at unexpected locations.

> LIDAR... Our laser maps of bees searching for targets 
> by odor can be seen online (Optics Express 13 5853)

Correct me if I am over-simplifying, but the basic scheme of your
tests was to introduce feed with a "landmine-like" scent, and get 
some of the bees to speculatively forage for new forage locations
(not prompted by dances). As a certain percentage of foragers will
always go on "purely speculative" sorties, this was a elegant 
approach to finding landmines.

Jerry's work is waaay kewl, but he is exploiting the well-known
behavior of bees under very specific artificial and unnatural
conditions, trying to get the bees excited about going out and 
looking for "nectar" when there are no actual blooms. (It may 
sound "cruel" to do this, but if it can remove landmines, my vote 
is to frustrate the heck out of the bees - they'll get over it.)

In fact, if any actual groceries had been found, this would have 
screwed up the test, as dancing would have vectored bees to areas 
of actual forage, rather than sending them out in essentially 
random directions in search of more of the "blooms" rumored to be 
blooming by the introduced feed. It would have screwed up the 
deployment of foragers, and limited the search area. So admit it, 
finding landmines won't work at all if there is anything of value 
to bees blooming in the area at the time of the trial.









> Also, keep in mind, landmines don't have any reward AND our 
> conditioning occurs at the hive, not in the field. 

Yes, as I observed above, a situation not found in nature is being
created to exploit the behavior of bees.

> Both our video and the lasers show bees locking on and tracking 
> odor plume from these vapor sources from many yards away. 

No surprise there, the radar study at issue clearly showed the same 
sort of strategy, to follow the dance vectors for the bulk of the 
flight (hundreds or thousands of yards) and then, when within range 
of the area of interest, to use sensory input, including odor, to 
pick a specific bloom on which to forage, from "many yards away". 
The lack of odor in the feeder dishes in the radar study is what 
resulted in so many bees making it to the correct area, but not the 
feeder itself.

> That means, using even the most conservative plume models, that the 
> bees were recognizing vapor trails in the parts per quadrillion or less.

The statement above is a bit of a non-sequitur when one recalls that 
the bees in the radar study were flying and foraging downwind. 
I think it should be clear that any "odor plume" would have been
downwind of the foraging targets, not anywhere else, certainly
not along the bulk of the flight path from hive to feeder. 

> Now, as per painting bees... the bees are SO sensitive to vapors, 
> you can more or less fry their olfactory system (overload it), at 
> least for the short term.

Yes, but in the radar study at issue, there was nothing to smell -
there was no overt scent being used, which, not surprisingly resulted 
in many bees following the dance vectors to the area of the feeders, 
yet being unable to "find" the feeder, exactly what one would expect
of bees used to basing their long-distance travel on dance vectors,
and their final approach on odor.

> We also are convinced (and we can't fully answer this conjecture until 
> we have the new lasers and some serious field time with them) that 
> hanging anything on a bee may drastically alter bee flight, including 
> orientation.

Of course there's an impact. People have been doing all sorts of 
unspeakable things to bees for centuries, the most basic being to
attach a feather or trailing thread to a foraging bee in an attempt
to slow down the flight of the bee and thereby do some "lazy man's
bee-lining". Funny how even extreme burdens in terms of both weight
and aerodynamic impact do not make bees so burdened any less able to 
find their way home to the hive.









> our bias is that any use of a food reward - near the area that you
> think that a dance might be sending bees- invalidates the experiment. 

Yes, it would invalidate YOUR experiments, as you want bees to
function in the near-psychotic state of having to go randomly
search for nectar without any actual blooms in the area!

But a "reward" is the only thing that is going to prompt a bee to 
dance at all. So, it depends on one's goal, and Jerry's goal is
to exploit the purely speculative sorties, keeping all the bees 
that are recruited by dances as close to the hive as possible.

In the radar study, the bees released away from the hive flew a
pattern that assured that they would never find a feeder, yet
they still flew that pattern. So the LACK of a reward in these
cases clearly showed that the bees simply were not be somehow
"homing in" on an odor, as there was nothing there. To trump
the entire hand, they were flying downwind! 

> We use food as a reward, but at the hive. (Well, within a few yards 
> of it). If the dance is sending foragers out to the food source -- 
> they should all end up at the feeder dish beside the hive. 

I hope Jerry is making a little joke here - of course 100% of the
foraging force is never going to blindly focus on the same single
source, the whole "hedging of bets" and "diversity in foraging 
options" is so well-known, it has been well-described in book 
form for years (Tom Seeley's "Wisdom of The Hive" would be about 
the best I could suggest on this).

> There's no food anywhere near the things that we get them to search 
> for. Why would the dance send them to a non-producing 'food' source.

It clearly does not - the bees foraging away from the feeder are 
"hedging the hive's bets" by looking for OTHER patches of the blooms
falsely said to be "blooming" due to the nectar coming in the door
from the nearby feeder, as any hive will do. So they find landmines.
Nice way to "hack" bees, but not very useful in describing what the 
bees might do if landmines provided nectar. 

(Of course, I would simply design landmines that WOULD provide 
artificial nectar heavily scented with random scents that masked 
the odor of a landmine, and REALLY mess with your bees' heads, 
and screw up your whole detection scheme if I were employed by 
Acme Landmines. Naw, I would never work on landmines.)

> For all of our work... relies on odor and odor alone. 

Yes, because you have set up conditions that prompt bees to go on 
exactly the speculative sorties that you'd like them to do, which
this is well-known bee behavior, not at all relevant to basic issues
of how bees utilize "Odor" and "Dance" in the real world.

> The dance, if it does what people contend, should be working against us.

Nope. A colony always hedges its bets, there are always some number of
foragers looking for "yet another" hitherto undiscovered patch of what's
blooming. THOSE are the bees that are finding your landmines.

> Why look elsewhere?

For the simple reason that, in the worldview of a bee, any ONE nectar source 
is absolutely certain to "dry up" or become "over-exploited" at some point, 
so "maverick" bees will always ignore the dances, and go out to try and 
discover an even BETTER place to brag about.

> P.S. What does the dance do? Frankly, I don't know. 
> But I do know, the bees don't need it to direct foraging.

If you have any doubt about the relative value of "dance" versus "odor"
to actual real-world colonies of bees in real-world conditions, go try 
and locate some landmines when the entire field in which the landmines 
are buried is covered in clover, dandelions, vetch, and other blooms.

You will get thousands of misleading tracks to slog through, 'cause even if 
your artificial "bribe" is 90% sugar, a heck of a lot of bees will still go 
for the clover and vetch.


----------



## buckbee (Dec 2, 2004)

Thanks Jim, that clarified a lot of things for me.


----------



## Barry (Dec 28, 1999)

Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2006 10:03:29 -0700
Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology
From: Jerry Bromenshenk


Well, its been a long time since any of my posts generated any 
discussion. Fun to see some give and take. Jim put in some serious 
time. Too bad we couldn't argue this over a couple of beers.

I stand by my last statement. You can read anything else you might like, 
into the discussion. I tried to say what we know from testing, what I 
'think', which is opinion. Bees Don't NEED the DANCE to be successful at 
foraging.

Note, I did not take a stand on the dance.

As to interference in bee behavior, caused by grabbing bees and attaching 
tags, that's my conclusion after lots of testing. Its opinion, but its 
also the reason we stopped pursuing tags, turned to lasers.

Now, as to why Joe's bees found their targets. Since the bees can find the 
odor without ANY dance information, they will get to a scented target 
regardless of whether they do or do not get any usable information from the 
dance and whether anyone grabbed them.

Also, Joe didn't paint his bees, but the GLUE is very volatile. In fact, 
I'm surprised it doesn't throw them off.

Do all of the bees go to our landmines, absolutely not. Do the majority of 
them search for the non-reward bearing targets -- it appears so, but our 
new lasers will finally answer that question.

Is our situation highly artificial - absolutely. But note, we're the only 
one who ever uncoupled the dance from the odor (as far as getting bees to a 
non-reward bearing target that doesn't look like a flower or feeder -- its 
just a patch of dirt). Now, this is MY opinion, and Jim and Bill aren't 
likely to agree. But, we've been reasonably successful at following our 
opinions, so I'll continue along this path until our data proves me wrong.

Jim says the dance will send foragers to other FOOD sources. Maybe. Do 
some bees fly and bring home water, pollen, nectar -- while others go to 
landmines -- certainly.

But, if you are a forager conditioned to landmines, YOUR floral constancy 
should be to a tray with oodles of syrup, that smells like a nitrogen 
compound. Since that tray is by the hive, economy of effort would imply 
that any foragers from THAT SOURCE should be dancing to direct their 
sisters to THAT source. In fact, we have to control access to the tray -- 
otherwise no bee goes anywhere other than to the tray.

Now, at least two of the major U.S. proponents (scientists who have 
published in Nature about the dance) have confessed that:

1) The dance doesn't appear to have a role in how we get bees to non-reward 
bearing targets, and
2) Of these, one of the key players is as interested in our laser as we are 
-- although he strongly believes in and has published extensively on the dance,
the scientist in him knows that we really don't know how bees discover and 
explore new areas -- if we can image that, picking out the bees from the 
moment they walk out the door, and can monitor all 360 degrees, with full 
sampling of wind directions, etc. -- we're going to have a chance to really 
examine central foraging.

Not necessarily what the books say, but what the bees do.

Jerry


----------



## Jim Fischer (Jan 5, 2001)

Barry keeps re-posting Jerry's Bee-L postings
here, so I'll post my responses to Jerry's,
as I've got my buddy Jerry cornered but good!

You actually reading any of this Barry?
Thinking it through? If so, why not
speak for yourself?

======================================
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2006 14:12:40 -0500
Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology
From: James Fischer [email protected]

> Jim put in some serious time.

Naw, I just type fast.

> Too bad we couldn't argue this over a couple of beers.

Anytime we are in the same zip code, and I'm buying.

> Now, as to why Joe's bees found their targets. Since the bees
> can find the odor without ANY dance information, they will get
> to a scented target

But the targets in the study at issue were >>NOT<< scented!!!!
"Joe" is "J. Riley", author of the study at issue, for those
playing the home version of the game.

> Also, Joe didn't paint his bees, but the GLUE is very volatile.
> In fact, I'm surprised it doesn't throw them off.

I'm not... there was no advantage to detecting odors in the
study at hand, so it did not matter. Had it been a windless
day, or had the feeder been upwind of the hive, odors might
have certainly factored into the results, at least in terms
of how many bees might find the actual target rather than
just fly in the direction of the target.

> But note, we're the only one who ever uncoupled the dance
> from the odor as far as getting bees to a non-reward bearing
> target that doesn't look like a flower or feeder -- its just
> a patch of dirt.

Well, read on for why I don't think you have "uncoupled" anything
and why your scheme "needs" dance. Ruth calls them "scouts", and
I call them "speculative sorties", but regardless, these are bees
who are predisposed to look elsewhere, overtly NOT at the "danced"
location of your feeder.

So, if I am on a speculative sortie, and all I have to go on is
the scent of the nectar that is coming in the door, I'm gonna do
what? I'm gonna fly off in a "random" direction or, more likely,
an ever-widening circle type search pattern, similar to an
orientation flight, and I'm gonna "see what I can find out there".

And if I am >>>REALLY<<< using "only odor", why do I not head straight
to the feeder only yards away from the hive? Well shucks, that's
because I KNOW that actual nectar coming into the hive from that
site is limited, and I need to look elsewhere, as I paid attention
to THE DANCES ABOUT THAT EXISTING SOURCE!

Now this is pure speculation on my part, but I'd submit that
Jerry's entire scheme depends upon "dance", or no bees would
go anywhere but the feeder, due to the odor from the feeder
being "right on the hive's doorstep". So, the speculative
sortie foragers see/hear/feel the dances, and use the vector
info, or the round dance description of "really close", to
EXCLUDE the feeder site as a source that is "overloaded" with
foragers, or perhaps "drying up".

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>< ><><><>
<>
<> 'Cause if it was "all odor", why/how would ANY bee IGNORE
<> THE ODOR WAFTING FROM THE FEEDER and look anywhere else?
<>
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>< ><><><>

> Jim says the dance will send foragers to other FOOD sources. Maybe.

No, not in the least - I said that the feeder site being danced
about is being overtly ignored by these speculative foragers,
as described above.

Clearly, they may be paying attention to tropholaxis, or maybe the
whole hive starts to smell like the "nectar du jour", and even
tropholaxis is irrelevant. Heck, tag some bees with number tags,
use an observation hive and look at how your toy actually works in
terms of what the specific bees that end up finding landmines do,
both inside and outside the hive.

An easy test would be to allow unrestricted access to your feeder
for a few hours, to "get 'em hooked", and then, if you were to
MORE SEVERELY restrict access to the feeder than you do now, you'd
see an increase in the number of bees resorting to speculative
sorties, and an increase in the number of landmines found per hour
versus what you have seen with less draconian restriction.

There ya go, a testable and falsifiable prediction that has actual
value to your core mission in terms of tangibly better performance
of your detection scheme. If it works, you can let me keep the
very slick bee counter you sent me. 
By the way - love the toy!
Do you need it back? Say the word...

> But, if you are a forager conditioned to landmines, YOUR floral
> constancy should be to a tray with oodles of syrup, that smells
> like a nitrogen compound. Since that tray is by the hive, economy
> of effort would imply that any foragers from THAT SOURCE should be
> dancing to direct their sisters to THAT source. In fact, we have
> to control access to the tray -- otherwise no bee goes anywhere other
> than to the tray.

OK, no surprises there - so, if you want to maximize the number of
speculative sorties, it should be no big surprise that if the
"nectar du jour" is coming in, but not keeping all foragers busy,
that more foragers will indulge in speculative sorties.


----------



## Barry (Dec 28, 1999)

<<Barry keeps re-posting Jerry's Bee-L postings
here, so I'll post my responses to Jerry's,
as I've got my buddy Jerry cornered but good!

You actually reading any of this Barry?
Thinking it through? If so, why not
speak for yourself?>>

I copied Jerry's post here because it is a very significant peice to this discussion. Then you had to go and rebuttel him so now I have to keep posting









I am reading this thread, thinking it through and letting those who have had firsthand experience in tracking bees battle it out. I just know that the older I get (48), the less I know what I thought I knew as truth or fact! I have such little free time to be at the computer these days. If I think I have something of value to add, I'll be sure to post it









- Barry


----------



## db_land (Aug 29, 2003)

VERY interesting discussion. I hope you guys will keep posting it. The following link is about using a robotic bee to study dance language and sound for locating a food source.

http://www.beekeeping.com/articles/us/bee_dance_2.htm


----------



## buckbee (Dec 2, 2004)

That's a very interesting article and settles the argument for me, anyway. Thanks for posting it, db_land.


----------



## Barry (Dec 28, 1999)

From Adrian Wenner:
------

We have had a lot of exchange about "bee language" on BEE-L this 
past couple of weeks, with some of the postings coming from several 
dedicated bee language advocates (and one newly "converted" advocate). 
I deeply appreciate their various comments, because it provides yet 
another chance to clarify matters with solid evidence.

Although several contributors seem enthralled by the radar-tracking 
experiments, I feel that Riley and co-workers failed on a number of 
counts:

1) They assumed that one can catch a bee after it leaves a dancing bee 
and before it leaves a hive  and then that it might "intend" to go to 
a specific site (an assumption never proved). They then glued a weight 
onto its back, released it, and expected that bee to behave as if 
nothing had happened  that its "programming would not have been 
altered by the treatment.

2) They ignored basic tenets about experimental techniques that have 
been with us for 140 years. For instance, as Claude Bernard (father of 
modern experimental biology) wrote in 1865, " ... when we have put 
forth an idea or a theory in science [ in this case "dance language" ], 
our object must not be to preserve it by seeking everything that may 
support it and setting aside everything that may weaken it." (More on 
that below)

3) Their experiment lacked adequate controls. For instance, they did 
not radar-track bees that had attended dancers that had "indicated" a 
different direction than the one they anticipated. Nor did they track 
bees that left the hive but had not attended dancers.

4) They erroneously presumed that their conclusion (that bees had 
"used" direction information obtained from dancers) was the only 
interpretation that could be reached from their results.

The most egregious of the above, perhaps, is that they "set aside 
all evidence that might weaken" their mind set. That is, they tried 
mightily to prove the bee language hypothesis true instead of putting 
it to a real test (e.g., blind, double blind, etc.).

(Please note that I do not dispute that the couple dozen tracked 
bees that they reported upon all went off in the same direction.)

In response, I present here some of the evidence that language 
advocates consistently ignore (as indicated in point 2, above), 
evidence that comes from only one of our many publications on the 
matter. (No, you will not find this evidence summarized in any 
publication written by bee language advocates  for obvious reasons, as 
listed in point #2, above.)

The evidence as summarized below appeared in the journal SCIENCE, 
after thorough pre-publication review by anonymous referees. That 
paper can be found at:

http://www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/sci1969.htm

In those experiments (as in others) we employed rigorous controls, 
as well as blind and double blind techniques. Neither organizers nor 
participants knew what results to expect. All test stations were 
cleaned and fresh glassware with new sugar solution set up each 15 
minutes. Dirty glassware was placed in sealed plastic bags. Data 
gatherers at each station had no contact with others during the full 
three hour period each day. Marked bees regularly flew between hive 
and feeding stations. Arriving unmarked recruits were gently picked up 
and dropped into bottles of alcohol for later tallying. We did not try 
to prove any hypothesis true but strove to learn what cues recruits use 
when they search in the field for food sources visited by regular 
foragers. (We had already learned from earlier experiments that 
recruits end up at a set of scented stations according to their 
geometrical placement in the field  rather than in a distribution 
predicted by the language hypothesis.)

Here are the results from two of the sets of experiments:

SET #1) In that 1969 SCIENCE paper we concluded in part: "That bees 
locate a food source by olfaction is especially possible in view of the 
extremely low recruitment rate of regular foragers collecting unscented 
sucrose at an unscented site. On 25 July 1968, for instance, in the 
absence of a major nectar source for the colony, we received only five 
recruits from a hive of approximately 60,000 bees after ten bees had 
foraged at each of four stations for a total of 1374 round trips during 
a 3-hour period." (That averages out as 0.0036 recruits per forager 
bee round trip at unscented food during a period of scarce natural 
forage.)

We knew from other earlier experiments that: a) the less odor in 
the food, the more frequently foragers dance in the hive and b) 
foragers expose their Nasanov glands most often at unscented feeding 
stations in the field. In other words, searching recruits in our 
experiment did not find the target stations, despite the fact that 
foragers danced more often than ever in the hive and exposed their 
Nasanov glands nearly every time they fed at the dishes. There was 
thus nearly always a distinctive odor at the feeding stations (N.G. 
gland odor)  but not an odor that recruits had associated with the 
sugar solution reward before leaving their hive.

In the summer of 2003 I demonstrated that same result to a group of 
military and civilian observers in Maryland. We had about 40 colonies 
of bees feeding on unscented sugar solution at various test stations. 
Each test station had a scent (odor of an explosive chemical) 
associated with but separate from the sugar solution. Recruitment was 
very high at all such test stations. At another location I set up a 
dish of unscented solution but with no associated scent. During a 
3-hour period, no searching bees landed at that unscented station.

In December of 2005 a film crew came here to Santa Barbara from 
France to get footage for a film on "animal language," choosing me as 
the focus for bee communication. I demonstrated how to train honey 
bees to visit food sources. In addition, I set out a dish of unscented 
sugar solution and had them train a camera on that dish. Even though 
foragers collected unscented food for a full two days from dishes with 
a scent associated with the reward  and recruits regularly showed up 
at those scented dishes  no bees arrived at the dish with unscented 
solution that lacked the appropriate associated scent.

I feel very confident that I can demonstrate this failure of bees to 
find unscented sugar solution at any time and in any place  given very 
tight controls on how the sugar solution is prepared.

SET #2) Consider the results of a more extensive set of experiments as 
reported in that 1969 paper.

During the summer in Santa Barbara we have remarkably uniform 
weather. That condition permitted us to run an uninterrupted series of 
recruitment experiments for 24 consecutive days. One can see ALL the 
results we obtained in Table 1 of that paper (see URL, above). A 
synopsis follows.

Ten marked bees regularly visited each of two stations at 200 m from 
their hive and 280 m from each other. On some days we used unscented 
sugar solution; on other days we used scented solution. Each trip by 
each bee was tallied, as was the number of unmarked recruits captured 
and the number of times marked foragers exposed their Nasanov gland.

RESULTS: A) Only 86 recruits arrived during a total of 18 hours (on 
six days) at dishes that had unscented food. During those hours, 10 
foragers made repeated regular trips to each dish and exposed their 
Nasanov glands 2,187 times.

B) By contrast, 1,717 recruits arrived during a total of 33 hours (on 
11 days) at dishes that had scented food, with foragers exposing their 
Nasanov glands 2,096 times.

SUMMARY:

Recruits per hour to unscented food  5; N.G. exposure at the 
station, 243 per hour
Recruits per hour to scented food  156; N.G. exposure at the 
station, 127 per hour

Those results were obtained in an experiment with an A PRIORI 
"crucial experiment" design (not the weaker A POSTERIORI interpretation 
by Gavin Ramsey about the radar-tracking study). To continue, on some 
days of the 24-day sequence, we switched the two target stations to 
unscented solution, set up a test station between the two of them, and 
provided scented solution at that third station instead. (Regular 
foragers continued to fly and collect unscented solution from stations 
at which they had been trained, but no such foragers ever landed on the 
third, test station.) On those test days, recruits that left the hive 
could either use direction and distance information obtained from a 
dancing bee, as expected by the language hypothesis, OR they could 
search for the odor of the food that had been brought into the hive the 
previous day.

That is what one means by a true "crucial experiment" (or "strong 
inference" experiment). The searching bees could either go to where 
they had supposedly been directed by the dance maneuver (to one of the 
two stations visited by foragers) or they could search for the food 
odor (at a third station never frequented by foragers)  a mutually 
exclusive set of outcomes.

RESULTS: Consider here the results from 8 of those days of the 
experiment  four days in which recruits arrived at stations with 
regular foragers feeding on scented stations and four days of recruits 
arriving the day immediately after, when foragers fed on unscented 
food.

A) When foragers fed on scented food, a total of 666 recruits arrived 
on those four days. The Nasanov gland was exposed only 721 times.

B) When foragers fed upon unscented food on subsequent days, a total 
of only 33 recruits arrived at the two stations visited by forager 
bees. However, 224 recruits arrived at the third test station instead, 
which had the scented food used on the previous day  though no 
foragers ever fed from that intermediate station.

That low turnout of recruits (33) at the two stations visited by 
regular foragers that collected unscented sucrose solution occurred 
despite the fact that, collectively, foragers exposed their Nasanov 
glands 1,218 times.

SUMMARY: Recruits should have arrived primarily at the two stations 
where bees visited unscented solution IF they had used dance maneuver 
information. Instead, 87% of the recruits arrived at the single test 
station that had no foragers but had the scented food used the day 
before.

[NOTE: In 1946 von Frisch published some similar results, results that 
revealed that Nasanov gland scent failed to attract recruits. He 
dismissed the disconnect between his results and his earlier hypothesis 
that it did so, as follows: " ... there is no doubt about the existence 
of an attraction exerted by the scent organ ... which has also been 
confirmed in further experiments into which I do not want to go here... 
" One can find a complete coverage of the Nasanov gland hypothesis 
problem in Excursus NG of our 1990 Columbia University Press book at:

http://www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/EXC_NG.htm

Did our crucial experiment ever get repeated? Yes, but only in 
part. That is a very interesting story in itself. The powers that be 
were apparently deeply disturbed by the rigorous nature of our 
experimental design and by its implications. Unbeknownst to us, those 
powers (apparently including E.O. Wilson) arranged for Martin Lindauer 
from Germany to come to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in the 
following summer to repeat our experiments there, presumably to 
determine what we had done wrong. (As one might normally expect out of 
professional courtesy, they did not invite any of us to participate.)

Lindauer obtained much the same set of results that we had obtained, 
though he apparently could not bring himself to use unscented food at 
the two regular feeding stations. Recruits still arrived 
preferentially at the central station when odor was provided there on a 
subsequent day. Did that shake his (or others) faith in the language 
hypothesis? Not at all. Instead, Lindauer concluded (without 
observation) that recruits must have paid attention to dance maneuver 
information from dancers that visited both outside stations, averaged 
the directional information, and flown out to the central test station. 
He thus ascribed even more capability to bees than earlier claimed (an 
ability to average directional information). In doing so, he ignored 
the fact that recruits failed to arrive in larger numbers at the two 
outside stations than at the central station  even though Nasanov 
gland exposure by regular foragers would have been high there and 
absent at the central station not visited by foragers.

Anyone can repeat the above experiments in a few weeks in late 
summer during a nectar dearth. All one has to do is to be willing to 
accept the results obtained and not dismiss results that may not match 
prior expectations.

RADAR TRACKING STUDIES

It would appear that some people think the radar tracking study is 
on a par with or superior to the studies we have done earlier. 
However, I fail to see how the radar tracking study can in any way 
compare with results obtained in the above comprehensive study and 
others we have done. Just because radar tracking involved a high-tech 
approach does not mean the experiment has a more rigorous design. The 
opposite is, in fact, true  as explained in my introductory comments 
above.

As for me, I am going to stick by my guns. I trust results of the 
natural behavior of thousands of unmolested bees obtained by use of 
blind, double controlled, and true crucial experiments more than 
interpretation of results obtained from the behavior of a couple dozen 
bees by someone else who tries to prove a favored hypothesis true. The 
two types of experiments are not on a par with one another. Neither 
should a believer in bee language be willing to discard evidence 
obtained about the behavior of thousands of unmolested searching bees.

Neither is all this controversy about a perceived unwillingness on 
my part to change my mind if compelling counter evidence comes in. One 
cannot erase from Nature the documentation we have published about the 
behavior of searching bees.

Nor is it all about what I, personally, might WANT bees to do, it's 
about how bees really behave. That's one of the reasons I recently 
published the review paper found at:

http://www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/jib2002.htm

This continuing saga reminds me of a statement by Nobel Laurate 
Peter Medawar: "It is a common failing  and one that I have myself 
suffered from  to fall in love with a hypothesis and to be unwilling 
to take no for an answer. A love affair with a pet hypothesis can 
waste years of precious time. There is very often no finally decisive 
yes, though quite often there can be a decisive no."

Have we wasted enough time and resources on this controversy yet?

Adrian

Adrian M. Wenner (805) 963-8508 (home office phone)
967 Garcia Road [email protected]
Santa Barbara, CA 93103	www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/index.htm

***********
The more persuasive the evidence against a belief,
the more virtuous it is deemed to persist in it.

Robert Park  2000 (Voodoo Science)

**********


----------



## Barry (Dec 28, 1999)

From Bee-L:


Honestly, I did not expect that my essay of two days ago would evoke 
such instantaneous and fiery response in such a short time. I usually 
spend a few days digesting input from others before responding.

While I consider the recent inputs in adamant support of dance 
language, let me add a note about how some of us bee researcher get to 
this point. Peter Borst already gave us a sketch of Tom Seeley and how 
he wasn't really an entomologist. On Mar 6, 2006, at 8:17 AM, Jerry 
Bromenshenk wrote (in small part):

> Bill said:
>
> <BTW, Jerry, I thought the reason you shifted to bees to find land 
> mines is you ran out of graduate students.>
>
> I hope that's tongue in cheek. I've had some wonderful graduate 
> students, but I now encourage undergraduates, rarely take on graduate 
> students.
>
> The reason is simple. Its due to my history and how I'm funded.
>
> I've worked in bee research for 31 year. I came out of school in the 
> wrong place, at the wrong time -- or maybe in the right place or the 
> right time.

I thank Jerry for that long exposition about his career. My 
experience has had some parallels.


I, too, grew up on a farm in what would today be considered dire 
poverty (no electricity, no indoor plumbing, no insulation in the 
house, or central heating  except for a pot-bellied stove in our 
small living room), and not enough money for food or clothes  
depression days!. Nine people in a small four-room house didn't help, 
either.

But our community did stress integrity and honesty! (An uncle of 
mine once said, "Honesty as a policy is dishonest!) My home town 
(Roseau) in NW Minnesota is now a STAR town in that state. My best 
friend through 12 years of school, Bob Bergland, became Secretary of 
Agriculture under Jimmy Carter, who asked him if he was honest before 
putting him on the job.

That adherence to honesty is perhaps the major reason I stick to my 
guns on the bee language controversy. I have no choice!

After high school, I received formal training in electronics, 
mathematics, and physics, while at the same time becoming deeply 
involved in commercial beekeeping. That exposure sparked an interest 
in biology, and I then studied biology for the first time in my life 
and earned a PhD in zoology at the University of Michigan with a 
speciality in animal behavior.

Earlier, while in graduate courses in mathematics, I had gained a 
thorough background in logic. At Michigan, while in an advanced course 
in genetics, I learned the distinction between direct and indirect 
evidence. At the time a debate raged about whether protein or DNA was 
responsible for genetic transmission. Fortunately, the scientists 
involved did not reach a consensus that protein was sometimes 
responsible and sometimes DNA! (A type of logic we now see pressed by 
some in our current controversy.)

Unlike Jerry, though, my wanderings through life as an adult somehow 
led me into a professor's job. I must confess that I didn't really 
grasp all this "clawing one's way to the top" that I have seen so many 
academics engaged in. I just continued my zeal to try and understand 
what Nature was all about and try not to impose my wishes upon Her.

My advancement through the academic ranks benefited from the fact 
that the University of California has an excellent set of checks and 
balances. Faculty members at UC, for the most part, get promoted (at 
least in earlier days) largely on the basis of the quality of their 
teaching and research  not on how much grant funding they take in. 
The department doesn't have the final say; campus-wide committees 
insure that promotions are merited.

In time, I taught a well-attended course: "The Nature of Biological 
Research," where I instilled in the students the importance of 
teachings by Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn (names quite unfamiliar at the 
time to biologists in general).

When my colleagues and I inadvertently challenged the bee language 
hypothesis through experiments such as I discussed in my last posting, 
our chances to get outside funding dried up completely  anonymous 
referees, completely committed to bee language dogma, would not permit 
approval of our funding requests.

That's O.K. undergraduate students flocked in to help as volunteers. 
Then I took a two-decade leave of absence into marine biology 
(crustacean growth and reproduction) while waiting for tempers to cool 
(not very cool yet, I guess).

If I had to do it all over again, though, I would have to go the 
same route  rely on what the bees "tell" me. That way was never easy 
 it included loss of all summer salaries from grants for the rest of 
my career. It also meant that my graduate students could not have 
assistance from grants for their research. They didn't mind too much. 
We developed a great camaraderie and we all toughed it out  and had 
great fun doing real science.

For more information on my career in this area, check out:

http://www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/readme.htm

In my science methods course (as above), I used the dance language 
controversy as an example of science in action. That included the 
following admonition: "...the bee language controversy continues to 
reach an ever-wider audience ... and promises to become an object 
lesson in how science progresses - not so much by "proofs" and 
"discoveries" as by the generation and replacement of hypotheses."


Adrian


----------



## db_land (Aug 29, 2003)

Ref the 3/11 post>
1) Why would foragers dance more often for unscented food? Even bees know odorless food is tasteless food which is usually diet food - so who wants to collect diet food for energy starved bees?
2) How did the foragers of non-scented food at explosives scented stations communicate the scent of the explosives to recruist back at the hive? The foragers don't collect explosives so how can recruits associate the explosives odor with a food source and station?
3) How can anyone make the claim that something is odorless to a bee? It has been shown that bees can detect parts per quadrillion - far beyond human ability to measure/detect. Even stainless steel would exude that many molecules from a few hundred meters away.

I can just imagine a conversation between a returned dancing forager(F)hauling "odorless" "nectar" trying to get recruits(R) to help collect it:
F(s): Come on girls, go here. Somehow this nectar is tasteless but has lots of sucrose. Passes out a small amount to potential recruits.
R(s): There's got to be something out there better than this - this stuff is tasteless! Why waste time and energy collecting some unknown substance that may or may not be good for the brood? NO THANKS.

To me Wenner's experiment clearly proves that the "dance" communicates (at least to human observers) distance and direction to a food source location. Ref Fig. 2 of his paper: he defines the broken circles around the feeding stations as standard deviations resulting from his interpretation of observed forager "dances".

So far, all of the DL experiments from both sides of the debate seem to prove that bees use both DL and ODOR to locate food and recruit other foragers to it.


----------



## buckbee (Dec 2, 2004)

FWIW, I still like the poetry of the two-dimensional projection of six-dimensional space.

[edit by mod - copyrighted material]

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1511/is_n11_v18/ai_19847180/print FiandArticles.Com>

[ March 14, 2006, 03:57 PM: Message edited by: Barry ]


----------



## Dick Allen (Sep 4, 2004)

>Wenner's experiment clearly proves that the "dance" communicates *(at least to human observers)* distance and direction to a food source location

Wenner does say that _humans_ can derive rough distance and direction information from bee dances. He also says that _humans_ deriving information from dances does not imply that _bees_ do so too.


----------



## Dick Allen (Sep 4, 2004)

>COPYRIGHT (C) 1997 Discover
>COPYRIGHT (C) 2004 Gale Group

Do some of you guys even have a clue as to what that means?


----------



## Kieck (Dec 2, 2005)

I still have questions about the whole controversy. In fact, this whole discussion brings up even more questions.

1) What constitutes an "odorless" food source? Db_land already asked this, and I think he's right to ask. When I've made up sugar syrup for bees, I can smell the sugar syrup. If bees' powers of olfaction are greater than humans (and everything indicates that they are), why couldn't the bees smell the sugar syrup, too?

2) So bees can find food by following odor plumes. Do bees receive some advantage by sometimes NOT following the odor plumes? If a bee finds a resource somewhere far, far downwind of a hive, and that resource is abundant and valuable, doesn't the hive gain by some method of recruiting? How could that recruiting work? Scent won't work to locate resources far, far downwind, especially in poor conditions. I've read that recruited workers -- on some of these long flights -- will "take on" enough food to reach the resources, but so little extra that they really can't spend much time searching once they get that far downwind. The first thing they do, then, is feed when they get so far downwind.

I know it's hard to test such things, and I'm not sure that anyone has tested the idea well enough to really support it, but the principle is useful to imagine such things. Obviously, bees can't fly indefinitely. If the only useful resource is (just to push it out toward the edge of effective foraging range) 3 miles downwind, any bee that wandered around upwind would be wasting time and energy. How do bees cope with situations along these lines?

3) Back to the whole swarm idea: assuming that the swarm follows scent plumes to ideal nesting cavities, "scouts" become superfluous. Why bother having scouts if the entire swarm can simply follow the most attractive odor plume to the new cavity? Why, then, do swarms temporarily alight on objects that are clearly not suitable for nesting?

The whole problem, for me, is that "odor alone" fails to adequately describe all the foraging strategies of honey bees. Something else must be used in part. Ants use elaborate communication systems (based, in part, on chemicals), so why can't honey bees? If the "dance language" doesn't explain their methods of communication, what system does? Wenner and others have demonstrated that Nasanov gland pheromones don't attract recruits in the field, so what does? And, at the same time, why exactly do bees "dance" then?


----------



## Dick Allen (Sep 4, 2004)

>And, at the same time, why exactly do bees "dance" then?

good question. maybe as a scientist, if you find the answer, you might win a nobel prize.


----------



## George Fergusson (May 19, 2005)

>why exactly do bees "dance" then?

Hmm.. I asked that very same question weeks ago. The best answer I got at the time was Bullseye Bill's "They dance because they're happy!"









George-


----------



## Dick Allen (Sep 4, 2004)

I just went back and read some of the copyrighted material that was flagrantly posted above  :



> It is risky for a young scientist to take on a radical theory. Championing an unproved or unpopular idea is a good way to put your academic career on permanent hold.


just ask Adrian Wenner about that!


----------



## Kieck (Dec 2, 2005)

"Championing an unproved or unpopular idea is a good way to put your academic career on permanent hold. "My thesis adviser was worried, too," says Shipman. "He was happy to know that I am beginning collaborations with biologists."" -Adam Frank

I don't particularly care for that statement about "championing and unproved or unpopular idea. . .." Unproved? First, very few scientists will talk about "proving" things; they tend to talk in terms of "supporting" hypotheses, not "proving" hypotheses.

And, secondly, what else should graduate students (if you didn't catch it, that's the group that the comment refers to) be doing? Most graduate schools require grad students to conduct "original research." The guidelines might be a little gray, but the idea is to deliberately find ideas (hypotheses) that are "unproven" for research. If grad students (and scientists in general) simply repeated the same experiments over and over, where would that get us?

The "unpopular" part, well, I can see where young scientists might find their careers put on hold if they attempt to overturn popular hypotheses in favor of unpopular hypotheses.

But we still get back to the same sets of questions:

1) Do bees communicate with one another?
2) Can they convey direction and/or distance information about resources through their communication system?
3) What sort of communication system do they use if they are capable of conveying such information? Has such a system been observed among bees?
4) If it's not a "dance language" that bees use (and it certainly could be that bees are using some other form of communication), what's the purpose of the "dances?"


----------

