After sending off the last message, one that directed interested
subscribers to study my bee language abstract in the December issue of the
AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL, I remembered that some people don't have ready access
to that publication. For efficiency, I provide a modified version of that
abstract below:
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Wenner, A. M. (1995) - HONEY BEE RECRUITMENT TO FOOD: TANGIBLE ODOR-SEARCH
OR MYSTICAL LANGUAGE? (An abstract modified from one appearing in the
December issue of the AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL):
A recent claim (Webster & Caron, 1995, Bee Culture 123:403-406): "The
evidence for dance language is strong," ignored 13 salient points published
21 years earlier in the same publication (Wells & Wenner, 1974, Gleanings
in Bee Culture 102:110-111,127). I update, expand upon, and add to those
points here.
1) The dance maneuver information is not sufficiently accurate to account
for supportive experimental results obtained by language proponents;
rather, the experimental designs used by them apparently funnel recruits
into "intended" sites.
2) Von Frisch recognized in 1937 (Wenner, with von Frisch, 1993,Bee World
74:90-98) - that one gets no recruits with no odor.
3) However, von Frisch (and others at the time) failed to perceive that
his 1940s experiments lacked necessary controls against odor influencing
results; later, his hypothesis did not survive tests in double-controlled
and strong inference experiments.
4) Only by using odor in single controlled experiments can one obtain
supportive results. Therefore, one can no longer justifiably explain
"positive" results with an uncritical assumption of "language" use.
5) Recruit search behavior is remarkably inefficient. Most recruits
require several flights out from the hive before locating the target food
source, are in the air many times longer than necessary for a direct flight
from the hive, and succeed only rarely unless one provides sufficient odor
cues at the food site.
6) One can easily see (especially with binoculars) that recruits always
fly zigzag into a target site from far downwind and not directly from the
hive.
7) If an array of stations is provided, recruits end up near the center of
all as expected mathematically - although a slight wind blowing along a
line of stations can alter a predictable distribution.
8) Despite dancing, recruitment more than 400m downwind from a hive is
negligible unless many foragers make round trips and thereby provide an
aerial pathway of odor [and use landmarks while travelling back and forth].
9) Crop-attached bees require no dancing for re-recruitment; they will
immediately return to their foraging area on the basis of an odor stimulus
alone.
10) New recruits, by contrast, do not begin arriving in quantity until
almost an hour after foragers begin regular trips.
11) [The arrival rate of recruits] then increases in frequency per unit
time even if the number of dancing bees is held constant.
12) Recruit success is thus dependent more upon the cumulative number of
forager trips (with time and with odor accumulation in the hive) than upon
the number of foragers involved.
13) Success rate depends upon odor concentration but not upon Nasonov
gland secretions at the food source or upon dance frequency in the hive.
Finally, recruits attending disoriented dances (dances without direction
information) can still find the "correct" site in the field.
14) No one seems to dispute the above known facts, so clearly researchers
have grossly neglected the role of odor in honey bee recruitment.
15) Furthermore, no one seems any longer willing to provide a concise
scientific statement of the language hypothesis, one that can accommodate
all known facts.
16) For those who wish to understand foraging ecology, an increased
emphasis on the role of odor in honey bee recruitment should be very
rewarding
For summaries of the above points, see Wenner & Wells, 1990, Anatomy of a
Controversy: The Question of a "Language" Among Bees (Columbia University
Press) and a more concise clarification elsewhere (Wenner, Meade, and
Friesen, 1991, American Zoologist 31:768-782).
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No one, then, should be surprised at a comment made to me a year ago:
"I no longer work with bee language --- too much is uncertain."
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* Adrian Wenner E-Mail [log in to unmask] *
* Dept.Ecol.,Evol.,& Mar.Biol. Office Phone (805) 893-2838 *
* University of California Lab Phone (805) 893-2675 *
* Santa Barbara, CA 93106 FAX (805) 893-8062 *
* *
*"Discovery is to see what everyone else has seen, but to *
* think what no one else has thought." - Albert Szent-Gyorgyi *
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