For Ruth Rosin,

For those of you who are amongst the undecided or questioning, which is by my estimate the safest place to be, you might try to wade through some of the articles listed at the site below:
http://www.edpsciences.org/articles/apido/abs/2004/02/contents/contents.html

There is a wealth of information on the communication of bees that requires much time to digest. 

  I have only a few questions for you Ruth and the first is:

         What percentage of correct information has to be transferred to be considered an actual passing of information from one bee to the many?
The second would be:
         Since we are aware of the genotype variations in HDL would this be a possible answer to the variation in levels of accuracy of interpretation of HDL due to our genetic juggling of the past 50 - 100 years?
The third is:
          How do you explain  the misdirection experiments done by  Riley, where release points are changed and yet recruits still fly to where the source should  be, instead of where it actually is?
The fourth is:
           What is the purpose of DL and it’s expression as instinctual behavior of nectar gathering bees, 
if not for the purpose of increasing the odds of locating nectar sources and nest sites? 
 The fifth is:
            How do you account for the experiments of Kalmus (1957) and Lindauer (1959) regarding the ability of bees to learn to correctly compensate for reverse movement of the sun when moved from southern hemisphere to the northern hemisphere?   Why would that make any difference?
And Lastly:
          How do you explain  the apparent  nest site selection preference and consensus in swarm scouts?  Since it has been demonstrated that swarms have undoubted selection, recruitment and consensus processes for arriving at a “ best of N” site with preferential criteria again demonstrated  recently by Seeley and Visscher in 2001.

This entire dialog regarding  DL has been stimulating and quite informative. I had a chance the other day to talk at lunch with Tom Seeley at our meeting in K.C. and he is indeed a keen observer and information gatherer much like his predecessors, whether they be right or wrong, depending upon your “beliefs“.  To say that we have all of the information necessary to formulate valid and lasting opinions, might be a wee bit arrogant of us.

Tim Tucker


Group decision making in nest-site selection by honey bees p. 101
Thomas D. Seeley and P. Kirk Visscher 


The vibration signal, modulatory communication and the organization of labor in honey bees, Apis mellifera p. 117

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