> In a discussion with Nick Calderone 
> about painting hives different colors...
> ...[No use]...
>...He wanted at least six feet between hives.

But I remember seeing every hive up at the Dyce lab outfitted with those
multi-colored checkerboard placards near every entrance, especially those
for observation hives entrances.  What was up with them?  This was back at
the last EAS up there... 2002?  Time flies...

(They looked like the "checkerboard hill" at the old Kai Tak Airport,  where
you did a very sudden sharp banking turn to the right at what seemed treetop
height, and dropped down onto the very short-looking runway. Lots of fun if
sitting next to a first-time visitor, as it was a very extreme maneuver, so
all one needed was the Lord's Prayer, or a white-knuckle grip on the
armrests.  The other good one is Logan, where on  a choppy day, water looks
like it will splash your windows as you skim over Bastan Habah.)

Anyway, there are also patterns that honeybees can distinguish.  I remember
there being several examples of "filled vs hollow" geometric shapes, and the
bees generally distinguishing "filled-in" from "hollow".  Here's a decent
paper on the subject, there's more... maybe half a dozen similar papers on
what honey bees can distinguish, or be "trained" to distinguish with food
rewards:

"Topological pattern recognition in honey bees"
Chen, Zhang, Srinivasan
PNAS May 27, 2003

http://www.pnas.org/content/100/11/6884.full.pdf

But I've convinced myself that varying the compass angle of each entrance
face is about the best way to keep drifting down in yards of a dozen or more
hives.    

             ***********************************************
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