>I'm note sure how this relates but... I vaguely remember something about
>some bees taken on a space shuttle some years back.  It only took them a
>few hours of confusion in a weightless environment before they got
>orientated enough to build comb in relatively straight and normal patterns.
>Seems like their magnetforceceptors would have been totally baffled as
>they rapidly raced around all lats and longs?
>Ed
 
Hi Ed:
        There were several insects taken up, as I recall, and bees were the
quickest to adapt to space.  Magnetoreception is certainly not essential to
comb building, otherwise top bar hives would not work!!  It is just one of
the tools in the bees sensory arsenal.
I have remembered the experimentors name now, it was De Jong.  He put swarms
in swarm boxes with nothing on the ceiling to initiate comb, and they tended
to build in the orientation of the parent colony.  When the swarm boxes were
placed in an artificial magnetic field they maintained the orientation
behaviour, but oriented as if the artificial forcefield were the earth's
magnetic field.
 
        What is also really interesting about the space experiment is that
the ability to accurately sense gravity is also important to comb building,
walking, flying, doing accurate dances...  The bees need that little slope
on the cells.
 
        Anyone know more about the space experiment?