Dear BEE-L subscribers,
Bob Fanning replied, in response to a comment by Becky Boehm ("I realize
that bees don't hear"):
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>I was under the impression that bees do detect sounds with an organ in each
>of their antenna called the Johnston's organ. I understood that this is
>how they detect the wag-tail dance information (distance and direction) in
>the near pitch darkness of a beehive. Is this different from a bee
>actually hearing or am I all wet and off base with my understanding of how
>they actually perceive sound?
**********
In the early 1960s I conducted a great deal of research on bee sounds
and found that bees do "hear" sounds conducted through the substrate
(vibrations). Actually, there is little physical difference between sound
waves transmitted through the substrate or through air. Sounds travel
faster and further through solid substances than through air. That is why
as children we would press our ears to a railroad rail to hear if a train
might be coming before daring to cross a trestle.
My background in beekeeping, electronics, and physics helped in that
study and led to one of my first publications (1963, in SCIENCE magazine):
"Communication with queen honey bees by substrate sound." The editor of
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN then invited me to write an article for that magazine,
which I did in 1964 ("Sound communication in honey bees"). Thanks to Barry
Birkey, one can find that article as item #4 in my portion of his website:
http://www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/index.htm
Initially, I had the same impression as Bob Fanning and tried to "prove"
(as a believer in bee "language" then) that transmission of distance and
direction information during the waggle dance was by means of sounds rather
than by vision, since hives are normally really dark inside. The story
then got complicated, once we re-discovered the overriding importance of
odor during honey bee recruitment to crops. (Von Frisch early on had
insisted that to be the case --- see item #1B on the website.)
Those interested in the history of my "conversion" away from belief in
bee "language" to a confidence that an odor explanation suffices can read
item #1A on the website.
Items #24, 25, and 26 on the website (three 1998 articles in the
AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL) summarize my current position on the matter of bee
recruitment to food crops.
One can also find a more technical invited review article on the subject
as item #15 on the website ("Recruitment, search behavior, and flight
ranges of honey bees").
Adrian
Adrian M. Wenner (805) 963-8508 (home phone)
967 Garcia Road (805) 893-8062 (UCSB FAX)
Santa Barbara, CA 93106 [http://www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/index.htm]
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*
* "The [scientist] within the [research club] is never, or hardly
* ever, conscious of the prevailing thought style, which almost
* always exerts an absolutely compulsive force upon his thinking
* and with which it is not possible to be at variance."
*
* Ludwik Fleck (1935; 1979)
*
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