Date    8/30/93
Subject RE>flight chambers
From    Rick Hough
To      Jerry Bromenshenk, Discussion of Bee Biology
 
        Reply to:   RE>flight chambers
Jerry Bromenshenk writes (regarding flight chambers):
 
>So far, we have come up with the following:
>
>1.  Eliminate corners
>2.  Use diffuse, non-directional light
>3.  Pick up the mini-nucs during the day to get rid of old foragers
>4.  May be able to train bees to fly to feeding station
 
Sorry Jerry, I don't have any details on chamber design - but I do have
a few comments (keep in mind I am not an academic, but a beekeeper
w/only a couple years of experience):
 
1) Eliminating corners seems like an easy way out - does anyone know
why the bees get "stuck" in the corners??   Are they simply trying to
fly "home" to the nuc location they originally oriented to??
 
2) Using diffuse lighting - it seems to me that this would confuse the
bees - I was under the impression that the bees use the sun as a
navigational aid (primarily the UV components, I think).  Without a
substitute sun, I think it would be *very* difficult for the bees to
communicate the location of a feeding station.
 
3) Pick up the nucs during the day to get rid of old foragers - this works,
but at the penalty of losing all those hard-working foragers.  If you
move the nuc more than 3 miles (in a single direction - not 1.5 miles out,
and then 1.5 miles back to the same location!) the bees will "reorient" to
the new location.  This way, you can move the hive at night (with nearly
all the bees), and the old foragers can still be a useful.
 
4) Training bees to fly to a feeding station - good luck - I'm not sure this
is training in the traditional sense, but if the bees can navigate, and they
find the feeding station and are able to return home to tell the rest of
the colony where the feeding station is, you can rest assured that the
other bees will come visit the feeding station, especially if that is the
only sustinance available!!!
 
Again, please take my comments in the light intended - I'm just someone
who has been keeping bees a couple of years, and has listen to the
traffic on BEE-L for a while - I am not by any stretch of the imagination
a scholar or researcher.
 
Good luck with your research - I would be interested to hear about your
findings - maybe you could post a summary to BEE-L sometime??
 
Rick Hough
[log in to unmask], a hobby beekeeper from Hamilton, MA (NE of Boston).