Second, humans think first in images; language and
> words are the inadequate vehicles that roughly approximate the content of our
> minds.

As a beekeeper who also has an almost useless doctorate in English
Literature, I feel compelled to reply to this.  Post-modern theorizing
about the nature of human language has pretty much demolished the notion
that we have thoughts distinct from words.  On the contrary, we think
**in** language.  To say that thought exists apart from that--from
words--is to leave ourselves open to the purely speculative possibility
that human consciousness has some sort of essential, transcendent
quality, and very few academics want to go that way.  "The sign-system
of language," as one theorist writes, "does not act simply as a
transparent window on to an established 'reality.'"

And the related issue of honey bee consciousness gets even more
complicated when we look at human brain research and listen to what, for
instance, neurologist Antonio R. Damasio says in a recent edition of
Scientific American: "Conducting an investigation with the very
instrument being investigated makes both the definition of the problem
and the approach to a solution especially complicated."

In other words, it should not be easy to say anything at all about honey
bee "language" and "consciousness" when there is so much work to be done
regarding the nature of our own.  Great care should be taken here.  As
usual, we fall back on the cautious, painstaking scientific method.

Robert Boschman