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Date: | Fri, 10 Mar 2023 13:08:36 -0500 |
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Given that blooms tend to grow in groups, a "lack of precision" in dancing is actually a good thing for the hive.
If all the foragers recruited all take exactly the same compass heading, then they all arrive at the same patch of flowers, and waste time approaching a lot of blossoms that have already been foraged that day. (See "footprint pheromone, etc.) But if the foragers are spread out slightly by less precise vectors, they forage over a wider area, which results in less "worked over" blooms per forager.
All this assumes that we are "in nature" or "in agriculture" where blooms of the same species of plants tend to be spread over a wide contiguous area. My bees have to be a bit more precise, as there may be exactly one Linden tree on any one 5-block area in Manhattan, and the plantings in Central Park are often very localized and unique. In general, I think my bees have learned to head for the Conservatory Garden up at the north end of the park when all else fails, as things are always in bloom there.
So, for a colony in Canada in the middle of a 5km square field of canola, *any* direction will do, and "precision" in dancing is a moot point.
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