> On Sep 11, 2015, at 8:32 AM, Christina Wahl <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> 

> Another possibility is mite dispersal via "visiting bees".  Is it possible that bees spend some time in other hives and end up returning home?  I haven't seen evidence of this but I can easily imagine a forager making a mistake, delivering its cargo to the wrong hive, then going back to the original home hive on the next trip.



Actually, I posited a third theory that is somewhat like this, but the researchers to whom I posited it, unanimously rejected it for various reasons. My theory was that in an apiary it is fairly common for bees to enter the “wrong hive.” These bees could advertise food sources such as flowers, or unguarded colonies to hives other than their own. 



In this manner, the location of a dying colony might quickly spread throughout the apiary via inadvertent information exchange. Conversely, when an isolated colony finds an isolated dying hive, that hive is probably quickly robbed out by just the one discoverer.



A parallel being that when people use their phones, they give away information like traffic patterns on the freeway, which is then fed back to them via the same phones. But nobody has ever looked into inadvertent information sharing in apiaries so no one knows how often it happens and to what extent it influences the behavior of the apiary. 



Peter Loring Borst

Paula Cohen Lab 

Cornell University

Ithaca, NY 14853





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