Karen Oland wrote (in part):

>For those that might be interested, there has been a lively "discussion" on
>dance language versus the "use of odor alone all along" on the Irish
>beekeeping list.


***********


    Karen also seemed to suggest that it would be nice if someone in
the scientific community got involved, an input I believe I can
provide.  Perhaps someone on this list can pass my input on to the
Irish beekeeping list.

    First, my qualifications.  I have worked with honey bees since the
1940s in commercial beekeeping, as a hobby, and in scientific
experimentation.  I was the first (1957) to hear and analyze sounds
made by dancing bees and completed my doctoral dissertation on that
topic -- working with the firm belief that bee "language" was fact,
"discovered" or "proved" by the work of von Frisch.

    Second, some early and important history.  Unbeknownst to me, in
the late 1930s and early 1940s von Frisch and Russian researchers had
successfully recruited bees to crops by the use of odor alone
increasing crop yield dramatically.  Von Frisch published papers on
that subject in 1937, 1943, and 1944, but one would be hard pressed
to find any mention of those results in publications by bee language
advocates this past half century.  Those papers seemed to have
largely disappeared from consideration immediately after von Frisch
proposed the waggle dance hypothesis.  In fact, neither the 1937 nor
the 1944 references appear in the official list of his publications
after he died.

    Third, clouds on the horizon.  In the 1960s, while trying to
"prove" that bee language was by the use of sound signals (not good
scientific protocol) and not by reading information obtained from the
sloppy dance maneuver in the darkness of the hive, our experimental
results repeatedly brought out the overriding importance of odor (and
only odor) during recruitment.  We managed to get the results of our
double controlled and strong inference design experiments into print
but then faced incredible hostility and ostracism from the scientific
community for "presumably challenging the findings of a great
biologist," as one person wrote.

    Fourth, vindication.  It now appears that we have been vindicated
by nothing other than by the early writings of von Frisch himself.
In the late 1980s R. Rosin came across the 1937 von Frisch
publication in the NY public library.  The journal BEE WORLD
republished it at my urging in 1993, as follows:

http://www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/bw1993

    Recently, I obtained a translation of his 1943 paper and found
that von Frisch remained quite adamant at that time that the
"language" of bees was odor and solely odor. One can find excerpts of
his paper at:

http://www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/frisch1943

    In other words, what we had stumbled onto during the 1960s, von
Frisch had already known back in the late 1930s and early 1940s.  The
use of odor alone suffices to explain honey bee recruitment to food
sources.  Thanks to Barry Birkey and to the editors of the JOURNAL OF
INSECT BEHAVIOR, one can now find a summary of the problem at:

http://www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/jib2002

    All of that information, though, fails to alter the mind set of
bee language advocates in the controversy.  Only recently have some
of those scientists even  grudgingly admitted that odor might be the
"overriding" factor in honey bee recruitment to food sources -- but
then hedge and hang onto the language hypothesis.  As one person
recently wrote, "I wish someone would openly admit that the dance
information just seems to give honey bees an edge, it's not the main
tool in finding the stuff."

    Many thanks to Karen for opening the question.  Let's hope my
input proves useful to some on this list and that someone forwards it
to the Irish beekeeping list.

                                                        Adrian


--
Adrian M. Wenner                (805) 963-8508 (home office phone)
967 Garcia Road                 [log in to unmask]
Santa Barbara, CA  93103        www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/index.htm

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*
*    "We not only believe what we see:
*  to some extent we see what we believe."
*
*                           Richard Gregory (1970)
*
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