Hi All

I've been wondering about this assumption that bees placed in the middle of a plot will preferentially work that plot before heading out to seek other flowers in the vicinity.  Folk often make this assumption, perhaps because it seems so logical and energetically sensible.

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

Why they should do this is guesswork - maybe they like having a poop in the great outdoors before they settle down to bring in the goodies?!  Honeybees are known to like to set up home some distance from the old one (around 800 m according to my Swarm Lure packet).  Also, many people have observed that if you site a colony on the edge of a field, they don't necessarily work that one but sometimes fly off in another direction.  Anyone know of such studies in honeybees?

all the best

Gavin

W. E. Dramstad, G. L. A. Fryb and M. J. Schafferc.  2002.  Bumblebee foraging—is closer really better?  Journal of Insect Physiology 42: 1089-1094.

Abstract: Bumblebees are important pollinators of crops and wild flowers, and their foraging range has considerable management interest. It is commonly assumed that bumblebees prefer to forage as close to their nest as possible. However, a review of the literature shows that there is little empirical evidence to support this assumption. An experiment aimed at investigating whether bumblebee workers forage close to their nests, and distances between three commercially produced bumblebee nests and an introduced forage patch were manipulated. The results presented here show that bumblebee workers significantly increased their use of a flower resource after their nests had been moved from within the resource to more than 100 m away.

****************************************************
* General Information About BEE-L is available at: *
* http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/default.htm   *
****************************************************