>From my vantage point at the bar I could see that the bees liked Mountain
> Dew better than Pepsi, but the amazing thing was that a significant number
> of bees were visiting the DIET Pepsi spout. So, what we think we know
> about
> bees in regard to their ability to taste and reliably detect sugar content
> is pretty easy to debunk
>
That is a fascinating observation Jim. I can see why a bee that learned to
associate the odor of Pepsi would explore the Diet Pepsi spout. But one
would expect them to quickly learn to associate location with sugar
reward. Would be interesting to mark those bees visiting the Diet spout to
see whether they continued to return.
A few years ago, I got a complaint from a neighbor at one of my yards
during August, that he had been mobbed by my bees at his home.
Upon follow up, I found that the guy was a Dr Pepper addict, and had trash
cans full of emptied Dr Pepper cans in the back of his garage, each
containing soda residues. When he left his garage open one day during our
extreme dearth, the bees found the sugar source and entered his garage en
masse in order to scavenge the remaining soda from the cans. When they
left at dusk, he closed the door.
The next day, he stood in front of his garage to inspect his triumph over
the bee mob. In celebration, he popped open a can of...Dr Pepper. The
previous day's orgy had so trained the bees to the odor of Dr Pepper, that
as soon as he popped the lid, the hungry bees (which were apparently in the
air searching for more sweet soda) immediately descended upon him--much to
his surprise. He thought that he was getting attacked, so dropped the soda
and ran into the house.
Luckily, no stings during the incident, and he was open to learning how to
avoid the problem in the future.
--
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com
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