BEE-L Archives

Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

BEE-L@COMMUNITY.LSOFT.COM

Options: Use Monospaced Font
Show Text Part by Default
Show All Mail Headers

Message: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Author: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Subject:
From:
Reply To:
Discussion of Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Fri, 7 Mar 1997 14:52:45 GMT
Content-Type:
text/plain
Parts/Attachments:
text/plain (64 lines)
What do the `bees' do when land on the buffet table?
 
Put another way, what do they land on and seem to stay on?
 
I say `bees' because honeybees are pretty selective in
what they eat and drink.  Wasps aren't.  You will find
no bees in a wasp trap made out a weak dilution of
jam in water.  Bees don't like acidic solutions.  Nor
will you find them (in my experience) on meat or fish.
Rarely will you find a bee in the autumn, when nectar
(sugar) sources are scarce in the  holes made in
ripe fruit by pecking birds.  (Again, acid.)  You
will find plenty of wasps.
 
(These observations are limited to the UK.)
 
If the bees seem to be interested in liquids, it could
be that there are no water sources easily available
to them outside of the buffet area.  So if the bees
are, or appear to be, drinking, the hotel owner
might make a start by providing water sources outside
the hotel area.  This is most easily done with a
shallow pan of gravel placed beneath a leaking tap,
hose, nozzle, or whatever.  The idea is to give
the bees something to stand on while they are drinking.
(Because they like to stand on something, they will
be much more attracted to a wet towel than to
the adjacent swimming pool.)  If they get a
successful drink, they will return to their
colony and distribute the liquid.  The colony
(I'm writing figuratively) will decide whether
the liquid suits its requirements.  On hot days
it will prefer pure water or weak nectar.
(There might, on hot days, be a division of labour,
with some bees designated water carriers and others
strongly-sugared-nectar carriers.) It will
use the water, through evaporation by wing movements,
as a refrigerant.  On cool days it will prefer
a stronger sugar solution.
 
An incoming bee will
do a complicated dance (among other things) to
communicate the direction and distance of the
source of its load.  If the colony likes the
load, it will send other bees out to the approximate
location of the source.  So if your hotelier friend
is getting a lot of bees on the buffet tables, the
home colony(ies) is getting lots of the closest
thing available to what it wants.
 
If the hotel is located, for instance, in the
middle of an arid region, and sits on its own,
(i.e., no local nectar sources in flower, no open water,)
then your hotelier might have to destroy or
have moved the bee colonies.  But that's another
story: how to find the home colony of a bee
which has just landed on your buffet.
 
A stupid question: does someone keep bees near the hotel?
 
Hope this helps
 
Roger Hardy

ATOM RSS1 RSS2