Most of us have heard the apocryphal tales of bees returning to the hive en
mass before a rainstorm, some of us (me included) have even seen this
"reverse-swarm" phenomena.

But this claim is of a far more subtle ability, and may evince a sensitivity
to "atmospheric conditions" we do not currently measure.

In essence, the paper claims that bees spent more time out of the hive
foraging and stopped work later in the afternoon when the following day was
a rainy one. They seemed to be responding to cues such as changes in
humidity, temperature and barometric pressure that preceded rainstorm

http://www.researchgate.net/publication/284714080_RFID_monitoring_indicates_
honeybees_work_harder_before_a_rainy_day
http://tinyurl.com/j2nazpk

I have not done more than skim this once, but it is so entertaining, I
thought I'd post a link before I am done slogging.

My questions are many and varied, as my BS meter tends to peg the needle
when I hear about predictive effects unaccompanied by clear descriptions of
the causation in tangible and highly specific terms.

For example - how can bees possibly detect tomorrow's weather today?
Is there a measureable low-pressure gradient, or other tangible factor that
can be correlated to the behavior?
What, other than barometric pressure, would reliably precede a rainstorm by
a day?
Is there some factor that we cannot sense, that bees do?

...or is this yet another example of "Serial Correlation" as I attempted to
explain in a 2003 Bee Culture?
http://bee-quick.com/reprints/rain.pdf

I'm leaning towards this being something other than what it is said to be,
as I know far more about weather than I could ever know about bees, and
standing on the ground without data from  "upwind" (for example, Kim Flottum
in Ohio sends me all his slightly-used weather), one cannot predict
tomorrow's weather with any useful accuracy.

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html