Su et al. managed to establish a viable mixed honeybee colony, with workers
of a strain of the European *A. mellifera*, and workers of a strain of *A.
cerana* from the Far-East, and an *A. cerana* queen. Workers of the two
species dance with very different waggle-dance durations, for o the same
site. Therefore, from the point of view of "dance language" supporters, they
use different "dialects".

Sue et al. reported in a recent publication in *PLoS One* 3(6) that recruits
of the one species reacted to dancers of the other species, just as they do
to dancers of their own species.The authors, who are faithful believers in
the existence of the honeybee DL, then concluded that if recruits were not
"misled" by the dances of the foragers that use a different "dialect", those
recruits must have, somehow, learned to correctly understand that different
"dialect".

This is utterly preposterous, because it is impossible!

Scientists can extract DL information from honeybee-dances, but they can do
so only by using a very large body of information obtained through
preliminary scientific research. And that research must be separately done
for each honeybee species and strain. Honeybees obviously do not engage in
scientific research. So how can honeybees extract the information? DL
supporters see no problem here. They assume that honeybees have an
"instinctive", genetically predetermined ability, to correctly interpret DL
information relayed in the "dialect" of their own species. (This is
naturally unacceptable to scientists who do not accept the existence of
"instincts", which they view as non-definable, and hence, non-existent
entities.)

However, assuming, for the sake of the discussion, that honeybees do have an
"instinctive" ability to correctly interpret information relayed in their
own "dialect", in no way could they ever have an "instinctive" ability to
correctly interpret information relayed in a different "dialect". The only
way honeybees could correctly interpret such information, is by doing the
scientific research scientists must do for that purpose.

There is, of course, a very simple explanation for the results obtained by
Su et al. Recruits reacted to dancers of the other species, just as they
would to dancers of their own species, simply because they do not use any DL
information in the first place!.

Hopefully this latest charade, played by DL supporters, would finally topple
the huge and ever-expanding "castle in the air", which DL supporters have
constructed on the foundations of v. Frisch's sensational, but
unfortunately, stillborn, DL hypothesis!

-
Sincerely,
Ruth Rosin ("Prickly pear")

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