>Mike Rowbottom wrote:

>I have just moved some colonies within half a mile of an extensive crop of
>field beans.  This move was a bit late as the beans are already in
>flower.  How long does it take for bees to locate and start working a new
>crop in this situation?

*************

    Actually, one can speed up that process by inserting odor of the
crop into the hives, as von Frisch and Russian workers learned in the
late 1930s and early 1940s.

    For some excerpts from von Frisch's 1943 article (in translation),
one can visit the following web site:

www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/frisch1943.htm

    It would be best, of course, if the hives were generally located
downwind from the crop of beans at that distance.  For more
information on that, check numbers 24,25, and 26 in the following web
site:

www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/index.htm

    Or turn to the Oct (p.746), Nov (p.807), and Dec (p.897) articles
in the 1998 AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL for that latter information.

                                                        Adrian

--
Adrian M. Wenner                (805) 963-8508 (home office phone)
967 Garcia Road                 [log in to unmask]
Santa Barbara, CA  93103        www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/index.htm

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*    "We don't see things as they are.  We see them as we are." Anais Nin
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