> >There is a study on bumble bees that notes that a patch
> is worked better
> when the bees are located *away* from the patch... 

In honeybees, I understand that the bee dance is different for nearby 
sources.  When dancing nearby locations, the bees can communicate that the 
source is ‘within’ 50 meters or so from the colony, but, cannot 
communicate direction OR exact distance of the source.  Thereby, making a 
less precise communication of the exact location of the source, and 
causing recruits the need to search the area surrounding the colony to 
individually ‘learn’ the precise location of the source.  

When a source located at some distance from a colony, the bees have the 
ability to use directional coordinates and distance, thereby making a 
higher degree of accuracy possible. 

Because of the increased efficiency in communicating coordinates of a 
slightly more distant food source.  It is my opinion that a  more distant 
source is perhaps likely to be exploited more efficiently sooner, because 
it will initially have gained an advantage in numbers of recruits and 
dancers caused by more exact communication of the location of the source. 

An example of this is being played out near my bee yard at this moment. 
When I set out cappings for beelining, I usually place it at a location of 
80 meters from the apiary.  By placing the beelining station at 80 meters 
against the tree line, the bees going to my apiary stay near the ground 
when returning and the bees going to the north woodland area need to 
orientate up to 15 meters to clear the trees, this makes the lining these 
bees much easier distinguish from my bees.  

To facilitate ease in beelining in another direction, I moved the station 
from the 80 meter spot to about 50 meters from the apiary.  When I made 
the move, I closed all the bees that were feeding at the station, and 
moved them all at once to the new location and added more cappings.  Later 
that evening and into the early part of the next day, the majority of bees 
visiting the new feeding location were going to the woodlands, and a 
strange gathering of thousands of bees were seen at the old feeding 
location.  No doubt that memory played a role here, but this also 
suggested to me that the bees the nearby apiary did NOT communicate the 
exact location of this new source, while the bees from more distant 
colony’s communicated the exact location and therefore were more efficient 
in exploiting the source than the nearer colonies.

Best Wishes,
Joe
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/HistoricalHoneybeeArticles

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