The April issue of the AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL has an article by Howard
Scott (pp. 275-276), an article that treats the question of how smoke
manages to momentarily quell guard bees.  In his presentation, Scott
employs the "multiple inference" approach, the most powerful technique we
know in scientific inquiry.  After providing all the known explanations for
the effectiveness of smoke, he concluded:
 
"Actually, I kind of like not knowing which answer is the real one.  It
adds to the mystery, plus gives us freedom to do our own theorizing.  After
all, the real magic of life is the unknown."
 
   As we have repeatedly emphasized, we have found Scott's approach to be a
good scientific attitude (see AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL, Feb. 1987, pp.
130-131).
 
   By stark contrast, some of the regular columnists of the beekeeping
magazines these past few years have steadfastly subscribed to the notion
that truth is absolute.  In particular, Tom Webster, Richard Taylor, Tom
Seeley, Frank Eischen, and Steve Tabor have strived very hard to keep the
dance language hypothesis alive --- despite an ever-growing body of
evidence at variance with that hypothesis.
 
   Any belief system that requires that much shoring up must surely be in
trouble!
 
   Through those same years, I have personally provided those same people
with hard results derived from careful experimentation, results that one
cannot reconcile with the stand they have taken.  All that effort has
apparently fallen on deaf ears.  They instead continue to focus only on
evidence that supports dogma.
 
   For instance, just four pages after Howard Scott's perceptive
appreciation of the process of science, Steve Tabor has the first of a
three part exposition of bee language --- once again --- despite the input
I have furnished him.  However, I hesitate to judge him too harshly.
Perhaps he will incorporate all of the contrary results I have fed him
through the years into the next two parts, thereby providing a balanced
presentation for the readers of ABJ.  Will he do so?  We have to wait for
the next two issues of ABJ.
 
   What difference does all this make to beekeepers?  After a half century
of bee language dogma, beekeepers must surely realize by now that the
language hypothesis has been of essentially no use to them in their
day-to-day operations. And scientists know that a valid hypothesis should
ultimately prove useful.
 
   We now have varroa and tracheal mites, as well as losses from
agricultural poisons and competition from importation of cheap (and
inferior quality) honey.  Bee researchers complain that insufficient funds
exist to tackle the mite problems.  Yet, millions of dollars have been
spent in the past several decades on the rather fruitless study of bee
language.  Just think what we could have known about basic bee biology if
those same funds had been directed instead to the real problems that
beekeepers face.  (Andy Nachbauer knows what I mean.)
 
   Do the beekeeping magazines really have that much empty space to devote
to keeping alive a hypothesis of little practical merit?  And, do these
authors get paid for the repetitive nature of their material --- material
that has been repeatedly challenged in scientific journals?  Please keep
your eyes focused on the content of the bee magazines in the future and ask
yourselves the same questions as posed above.
 
   Please excuse the above content if it seems too harsh.  In the issue
after the last part of the Tabor presentation, I will try to get a very
simple experimental design into print in ABJ, an experiment that bee
language proponents can execute themselves within only a week or two in
late summer --- and one that will yield results that differ from that they
might expect if bees have a language.  (I could do the experiment myself
and publish the results --- but we already know that results published by
me would likely be ignored by those proponents.)
 
   Howard Scott certainly was on the right track with his article about the
efficacy of smoke.  Can we somehow get bee researchers to follow his lead?
 
   Yours for the better execution of science.
 
                                                        Adrian
 
p.s.  I am sorry that I will not be able to respond directly to individual
comments.  This next week I will be doing real basic research on honey bees
out on Santa Cruz Island --- and without any government funding, all
expenses paid out-of-pocket.
 
Adrian M. Wenner                         (805) 893-2838 (UCSB office)
Ecol., Evol., & Marine Biology           (805) 893-8062  (UCSB FAX)
Univ. of Calif., Santa Barbara           (805) 963-8508 (home office & FAX)
Santa Barbara, CA  93106
 
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*  "...scientists are paradoxically resistant to change, even when    *
*  confronted with evidence that virtually demands change of them."   *
*                                                                     *
*                                 Barber, 1960 (in Greenberg, 1983)   *
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