Peter Dillion said:

> Brood frame as found in the majority of my hives are as you suggest -
> not completely fixed onto the bottom bar. But as for leaving a continuous
> lax of wax - they tend to be fixed in the central areas and "unfixed"
> near the lateral area.

This is EXACTLY what everyone should see.  The bees appear to
"cut a slot" about 1/3rd the way from each end toward the center,
leaving something slightly less than 1/3rd of the total length of the
frame "intact" at the center.  The amazing thing is that this makes
the comb resonate better at dance frequencies.  One can take drawn
empty comb and cut it yourself, measuring resonance as one cuts each
millimeter away, and one will find that the bees do it exactly right, likely
by "trial and error", since there are differences between how much is
chewed away from apparently "identical" frames of comb in different hives.

> I have thought that this was due to the need for passage of bees from comb to comb.

Nope - I pre-cut holes in the far outer corners of each brood frame for
queen passage, and the bees will STILL chew away a straight line, roughly
one cell thick, as you described.  (I CAN'T be the first to notice this!!!)

> Would a bee pick up the same "message" from the area of comb filled with liquid
> honey compared to the same message generated on an empty area?
> Would any difference result in a different response in the "receiving bee"?

The vibrational frequencies would be the same, but they simply would
not travel as far from the dancing bee as they might on empty comb.
The filled comb would tend to "damp" the vibration, nothing more.

> You state from your experience that dances tend to occur on areas
> devoid of honey - maybe there is a reason for this.

Sure there is - the bees chew away at the bottom of the comb to
create a good "dance floor", do you think that they would mess up
all that work by then filling it with heavy honey?  Check that chewed
frame every week from now until you put the colony to bed for winter,
and I will bet you $20 that you will never find ANY significant honey
stores in that frame, as long as foraging is going on.

> -so much to investigate and so little cash!!!

I have the exact opposite view.  :)
Cash is easy - good practical ideas are the rare commodity.

> Deveating from the topic in hand , would it not be worth the biscuit for
> established centres to research to create a network of investigators.
> These delving into areas that accredited centres are unable to due to
> lack of time, resources and cash. Subjects that may by themselves
> be relatively unimportant when taken in isolation - but when linked to
> other gathered knowledge might give the edge on the acceptance or
> rejection of a theory?

Not my place to say.  I'm a physicist who left the calling for the
"glamorous" world of networks, routers, servers, SONET rings,
fiber cross-connects,  and all the other toys that go bump in the
night and make the internet work, but never get any attention.
Plumbing for electrons.  Who am I to suggest things to people
who continue to tolerate no funding, antique equipment, grad
students with agendas, administrators who need a cranial-rectal
extraction, and worst of all, BEEKEEPERS bugging them with
questions all the time?  :)

> ...pages 309/310 of "Bees" authored by I. Khalifman...
> This text continues that so called trained bees were used on various other
> plant crops. If this is true, then the idea that there is no transfer from artificial
> feeder to field supplies is not so. I have no evidence myself supporting or rejecting this.

If it worked as described, the pollination business would be much
less complex than it is, and it would be easy for everyone to produce
perfect crops of varietal honey.  I'm not holding my breath on that report.
It goes well past "anecdotal", and is well into "apochryphal" territory.

Maybe the "training" was nothing more than smoke and mirrors
covering the fact that more hives than usual were being deployed.

     (Due to budget cutbacks, we who work the day shift here
     at the Idea Factory have been forced to eliminate the use
     of mirrors, and do everything with nothing but smoke.)

You can try to "fake out" your bees, but I am certain that their own
system of checks and balances and hedging their bets will focus
their foraging efforts on whatever is the best source of nectar or pollen
NOW, and refocus on another source when the first "dries up" with
the speed and handling of a sports car.

Do you randomly change the settings on your carburetors and
expect your car to run smoother?   I thought not.   :)

A bee colony is a nice machine.  The bees are the parts.
Most "maintence" on the machine breaks more than it fixes.


        jim