Adrian said: > He should easily be able to train 5 (five) marked forages to collect > mildly scented sugar solution at a feeding station located 500 > meters/yards DOWNWIND from a bee colony and allow no unmarked bees > to return from that station to their colony. > I can predict that he will obtain essentially no new recruits to > that station during a three-hour period -- "bee language" or not. Heck with the warm weather we are having, many on the East Coast could do this experiment this week, and avoid the distraction of having competing nectar sources. Here (close to the middle of Nowhere, Virginia), we will have: Sun 79 F Today 84 (!!!) Tue 77 Wed 76 Thu 73 Fri 61 But as far as tests go, been there, done that, still have the tee shirt. Just to make life harder for the girls, I used 100% UNSCENTED sugar solution in sterile dishes, and trained across the entire length of my 500 acre field. Conditions included "no wind", "upwind", and "downwind". Lots of recruits, no scent, no distractions (500 acres of freshly-cut hay stubble). The bees were NWCs and Weaver Buckfasts, so it was fairly easy to verify which hive the bees came from, as anyone can distinguish a (darker) NWC from a (lighter) Buckfast. The tested hives were within 50 feet of each other. My shoe size is 8 1/2. My results were very similar to those cited in "The Honey Bee" by James L. Gould Carol Grant Gould. But if one has such warm weather, a better use of one's time might be to check some colony weights and feed the light colonies. Yesterday, I pumped two 55-gallon drums of syrup into hive-top feeders as all this warm weather, combined with zero nectar means that my colonies will be losing weight. All in all, the constant rain kept sorties down, washed nectar out of blossoms, and reduced harvestable honey to well below the reduced harvests due to the prior 4 years of drought. The rain also meant little newly drawn comb. More supers of foundation deployed this spring went BACK into inventory for use next spring than went into the stacks of supers of "drawn" comb. At risk of sounding like a Chicago Cubs fan, there is always next year. :) In other news, I see that Kim Flottum has picked a stable location for the "Sugar" article, complete with artwork, so while I have sent out all reprints requested to date, I'll continue to mail out reprints only to those who have no computer, news that will be music to the ethernet port of my color printer. Here's the link: http://www.beeculture.com/beeculture/SugarReprint.pdf Also, here's the latest results from the Supercollider, where bees, politics, law, and random associations of beekeepers were all accelerated to near the speed of light and smashed into each other, now even available to those too cheap to buy a subscription. Consider it fair notice that you too have a decent chance of winning a 5-year subscription to Bee Culture for writing one good, short, snappy line. http://www.beeculture.com/beeculture/months/03nov/03nov2.htm jim (Exposing "conspiracy theory" conspiracies since 1970) :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: -- Visit www.honeybeeworld.com/BEE-L for rules, FAQ and other info --- ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::