Roy Nettlebeck wrote:
>
>  On Wed, 11 Dec 1996, Jerry Fries wrote:
>
> >         This is interesting! When I offered communication as a sign of
> > intelligence I was thinking about the famous bee dance. One bee returns to
> > the hive and insructs some of the others . She will tell another bee what
> > is of interest,where it is , how far it is from the hive, and in a way that
> > we can understand. We can even create a little imitation communicator and
> > direct the bees ourselves. They do not have a fifty thousand word
> > vocabulary but it works for them. Who knows the bees may de able to
> > understand each other better than humans understand each other.Humans think
> > in words most of the time, but what about the person who is deaf and dumb?
> > Is that person intelligent even though they cannot use words to think with?
> > I sounds as though you may have bit off an awful lot to chew with this
> > suject.
>  Hi Jerry and All ,
>   Jerry you did a good job.Intelligence is a way for our ego to bring us
> up over everything else on earth.I have been around some very intellegent
> people in my life. Two of which taught me nuclear physics.They were hand
> picked by Himmen Rickover to teach at the Naval nuclear power school. They
> both recieved there Masters at MIT in 2 1/2 months plus had all the
> logrithims in there heads.I did not belive the Lord would make human
> computers. These men were great teachers also.I would say that they were
> very intelligent people.Communication skills are needed in teaching and
> they did an outstanding job teaching us some very complex ideas.
>  The Honeybee has ammazed man for a very long time.The deeper we get into
> this wonderful insect the more questions come up for us to answer. The
> idea of intelligence , collective or otherwise is a mute point. It is only
> for pumping up mans ego. If we take the size of the bees brain and write
> down all of the known behaviors that we know of , we would find there % of
> usage  of there brain cells much higher than ours.
>   If Man was really intellegent ( smart) they would not be in a race to
> distroy this planet and each other.If we were intellegent we would be
> symbiotic with this eartth.  I do have a problem with calling a honeybee
> stupid. I have seen some very funny landings at the entrance of a
> hive.They do not land very smooth sometimes , but knowing what I do know
> of the bee , I would not call them stupid , because they have a landing
> problem.
>  I would like to thank the people who have posted on this thread.We have
> great people all around this globe that really love honeybees for what
> they are and what they do for the Earth. We do have some very intellegent
> people working to help the bee and us. It is wonderful to see people from
> all around the Earth have respect and love for the honeybee.
>  Best Regards
>  RoyRoy, I had heard that when New Zealand beekeepers (ie., downunder)
started to export bees to Canada, the purchasers had some trouble with
the bees as the foragers landed at the hive entrance. With the advent of
fast air delivery, the bees were unaware that they had arrived in the
northern hemisphere and so for a time landed upside down (on their backs)
until they realised they had to flip their behaviour from the southern
hemisphere. True! Peter