Ahem. . . .  On a bit more serious note. . . .

“What I am suggesting is that its [dance] use now is to attract other
bees to sample odors from good foraging sites.  There is no
communication of locality via a ‘language’.”

Good on ya, Mite!

I am a big fan of open-feeding.  Done right under right conditions,
nothing beats the efficacy of this method; the bees will work at it just
like another flow: they wolf down one barrel in nearly two days, depending
on the number of your colonies.  [Spreading disease?  Probably, but show
me some hard data: who, where, when, what, why, how, and which disease?
This spreading-disease hypothesis could be just another long-standing,
codified, and carved in the stone mumbo jumbo]

Back to the bee lingo:

My observations seem to concur with Julian’s assertion: finding location
is a “hit and miss” operation.  A few bees will nail—-“stumble into” more
likely—-the location very quickly; however, a whole lot more bees will
buzz around, a la ground-hugging spit fighters, all over the place,
especially dark or shaded areas, long before they finally home in and,
only then, they hone in on the route: the shortest direct flight
possible.  It takes a while for most of them to figure the location out,
blowing in the wind the Nobel-prize winning nonsense that so many circles
counterclockwise means so many yards and miles (Are we talking about bee-
miles or human miles—-to figure this out please read their hieroglyphics
writ large at the bottom of each cell.  To me those letters look more like
Chinese Ideograms!).

Their frantic search-flights resemble those of anxious scout bees from a
spilled swarm, right before an impending storm on the horizon.  I do not
suppose some of you will believe this hit and miss communication.  Fix a
small amount of syrup, regardless of the ratio since the bees will take
anything sweet like nectar (80% water), and set that station at least 100
feet away from the yard.  One can easily observe how ANGRY their buzzing
sounds.  Sometimes, this ground-hugging, anxious buzzing will go on albeit
others are at the ground zero in a feeding frenzy.

Yoon
Oklahoma is OK

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