[log in to unmask] (mailto:[log in to unmask]) writes:<You
learn a lot of things about bees doing that, and one of the things you learn
is under exactly what conditions bees will or will not draw, store, and
cap. You learn how they 'think' and what they 'like' and on't like. You can't
force them; you have to think like they do and lead them.>
Agree totally. I've long ago given up the notion that because I view the
world one way, that's how bees do it. When DARPA originally asked whether
we could train bees to locate explosives, I thought it was possible, maybe
not probable, but we were willing to give it a try. The results far
exceeded my expectations in terms of limits of detections (parts per
quadrillion), accuracy, and trainability. But we can only get bees to do what they
would normally do. We can't, for example, get them to forage at night or in
dark caves, regardless of how much the military would like to see this. I
have thought of bioengineering a honey bee/firefly so they'd have their own
lights - joking of course.
So, I'll disagree with Peter's argument that seems to say - if bees select
a cavity that limits storage space, why do they need to assess honey stores
- and Peter, correct me if I've stated this wrong. One of the people I
really respect for trying to keep objectivity in these discussions is Peter.
So let me know if I've misquoted you here.
But, in this case, I'll argue that this is the same kind of argument that
many experts in insect olfactory systems told DARPA about ten years ago.
These experts argued that bees have a poorly developed sense of smell
except for some pheromones and floral scents, so why would anyone expect them to
be able to detect explosives? or as we now know, drugs, dead bodies, etc.
Here's where the human judgement comes up short - second guessing bees
and other insects (e.g., wasps). The expanded argument made to DARPA was
that bees have tiny brains, so obviously they can't waste any brain
functioning for irrelevant things like detecting chemicals to which they aren't
normally attracted.
We now know that the statements about poor sense of smell are incorrect -
bees and wasps have very sensitive olfactory systems AND the statements
about poor sense of smell except for floral scents are derived from misquotes
of a very cursory study by Von Frisch and the rebuttal study of Ribbands.
Ribbands proved Von Frisch was wrong about olfactory limits of detection,
and showed that bees were much better at much lower concentrations with
respect to the chemicals tested by Von Frisch AND also that bees were even
better in terms of detection sensitivit with respect to some floral scents.
Jerry
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