I don't think there is any evidence that honey bees vary their foraging behaviour based upon an assessment of how much they have in reserve. To the contrary: > Honey combs were removed or added to a colony to alter the colony's energy state. There was no difference between the preferences of bees from colonies with large amounts of honey and those from colonies with small amounts of honey. Honey bees are little affected by the variance of resources. Risk-sensitive foraging in honey bees: no consensus among individuals and no effect of colony honey stores. Valerie S. Banschbach, Keith D. Waddington, Department of Biology, University of Miami Copyright © 1994 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. I have never seen anybody show that honey bees can even evaluate how much honey they have in the hive, let alone how much that quantity would last. PLB *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at: http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm
