>> "The fanning bees would be "grounded"."  

> Is that strictly true?  From what I remember, beeswax is an insulator with a dialectric constant roughly the same as dry paper or rubber.  A super-saturated sucrose solution is in about the same range.  (I couldn't find a reliable measurement of the dialectric constants for glucose or fructose, much less for honey but sucrose seems a plausible equivalent.)  

I've not seen fanning bees anywhere but on the bottom board, hence my focus on wood and it moisture content.  
If bees also fan to vent the colony standing "on the combs", then I stand corrected, and I'd like to see it.
I have screened bottoms, so my bees are at least sharing a common ground plane.  ;)

> you can see the effect on pollen grains because the grains are so tiny - and so are water droplets.

But the bees certainly do not attract water droplets - they do not get wet when fanning.  Water vapor that is in the air is a gas, so it can't be attracted to a bee by static electricity the way a pollen grain mMyight.  

What I think was postulated was ionization of the air as a method of reducing the moisture, and I have multiple problems/critiques on that approach, as an efficient ionizer can certainly "trap dust" in the air, but will not trap water vapor or liquid water (mist). For a Dielectrophoresis effect to "dehumidify", and take water vapor out of the air would be a very complex scenario:

a) Put enough energy into a water droplet to get a corona discharge from the droplet

b) This will create a "Taylor Cone", something I have not thought about since school, but it is a capillary-action cone with a jet coming out of the peak, forming a spray of the smallest possible droplets.  So you just barely overcome the capillary forces.

c) The droplets that spray forth are electrically charged and will capture water vapor in air.

d) The now larger water droplets fall down and drain away, and the air has been dehumidified.

But we need water to do this, and the water has to get the joules.  I have no idea how to go from fanning bees making static electricity of any kind to the formation of a Taylor Cone in a nearby capillary tube of water to achieve any of this, but I am willing to listen if anyone has a better grasp of any of this than I do.

But most problems are best solved by asking questions about orders of magnitude, and how far we are short on the energy required.  This is one such question.

I also doubt that a bunch of bees fanning will somehow all act as "capacitors in parallel", but I was positing that as a fanciful "given" to try and give the bees the best chance they could under all possible aligned stars and calm seas.

I think we've beaten this not just to death, but into a puddle of goo.

 

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