In a message dated 23/09/2009 11:23:46 GMT Daylight Time,  
[log in to unmask] writes:

Nonetheless, the mere fact that a daily newspaper anywhere in the  world,
dares seriously raise the possibility that the 1973 Nobel  Prize
winning claim that honeybees have a "dance language", might be  abandoned, 
is
a welcome, and encouraging sign of a basic change in the  scientific
zeitgeist!



Pettigrew in his 'Handy Book of Bees' (p.49 from memory - I don't have a  
copy - they're too expensive!) was suggesting a century earlier than that  
that the dance was a language.  However, dancing may not be the whole  answer, 
as Ruth so keenly and frequently points out, to bees' success in  locating 
and using sources of useful forage. A few years ago at the AGM of DARG,  the 
Devon Apicultural Research Association, the guest speaker advanced the  
hypothesis that bees could "see" in the infra red range through sensors on 
their  antennae the radiation emanating from areas of useful forage.
 
Chris

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