Wow!  That paper happens to be sitting on my desktop, and I'll happily share
my thoughts on it with you all.  First of all, a little background.

I'm a scientist, a crop scientist.  Trained (and reasonably successful as
far as I know) in being objective and perceptive.  As a regular journal
reviewer I'm used to reassessing the interpretation scientific authors put
on their results.  The paper Ruth just criticised *is* science of the
highest quality.  I find it most impressive.  Here is what is reports:

- foragers were individually numbered, and bees arriving at the dish of
unscented sucrose monitored, to permit bees to be studied at the moment of
their recruitment
- such bees were watched observing a forager's waggle dance and trapped
individually as they left the hive
- with the help of radar their flight paths were monitored
- out of 23 recruits leaving the vicinty of the hive with transponders
attached, 19 were able to be followed by radar
- all 19 were tracked heading in the direction indicated by the forager (+/-
about 10 degrees from a straight line to the feeder), one didn't fly, and
three headed in roughly the same direction but could not be followed by
radar
- the wind field was monitored and could not have carried an odour plume
towards the hive
- from the figure in the paper, it looks like about 17 additional foragers
which were captured after watching the dance and released away from the hive
also all flew on a trajectory indicated by the waggle dancer and not towards
the dishes themselves
- the bees had difficulty finding the exact location of the dishes, an
observation entirely compatible with the current view that bees will use
visual and odour cues to make the final approach to nectar sources

Having read various contributions on this controversy over several years, I
had been prepared to entertain the thought that bees do not communicate
direction and distance of forage by waggle dances.  But Ruth, appearing on
another forum in the last few days with criticism of a different paper,
prompted me to go and read the original Riley et al paper.  It is a
beautiful piece of work, and leaves little room for doubt that the waggle
dance does indeed communicate directional information to naive foragers.

I don't know why Ruth is implying that the authors of the paper deny a role
for scent.  Their second last sentence reads:

'Our results have shown that although this process is highly effective, most
recruits would not reach the intended food sources without the use of odour
and visual cues in the final stages of their flight.'  They believe, and I'm
sure that they are right, that the waggle dance tells them roughly where to
go.  In normal circumstances, they would also pick up odour cues and use
these to fine tune their approach to the site.

The abstract is here:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v435/n7039/abs/nature03526.html

but you'll either have to pay, or ask a scientist with library access if you
wish to see the full paper.  It is an easy read, honest.

This press release gives a few more details and a photo of a bee with a
transponder:
http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/media/pressreleases/05_05_11_honeybees.html

all the best

Gavin.

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