Hi Ruth and All

Your suggestion to paint foragers visiting the feeder (assuming that is
where you propose to find trained foragers) will certainly contaminate them
and probably the feeder with odours.  This would give sceptics - like
yourself -grounds to disbelieve the results.  Unless of course you work in
situations with carefully monitored wind flow, or you move foragers away
from the hive before release, both features of the work of Riley and
colleagues.

Riley and co went one better than your suggestion.  They marked most bees in
the colony with numbered tags before the experiment began and so avoided the
bias associated with marking bees visiting one site:

'We used a two-frame colony, equipped with a transparent side panel that
faced directly into a small, low tent attached to the hive.  From within
this darkened enclosure we could observe the dance behaviour of the bees,
and their entry into and exit from the hive.  Most of the bees in the small
colony were marked with numbered tags.  The entrance to the hive was in the
form of a clear plastic tube, so that observers stationed outside the tent
could also observe entry and exit, and capture selected bees for tagging
with transponders.'

It should be clear to everyone now that the Riley and colleagues 'Letter to
Nature' is an excellent piece of work and proves to the satisfaction of the
great majority of observers that the dance language is the main means of
sending recruited foragers off in roughly the right direction for roughly
the right distance.  Von Frisch made an incredible discovery, and it has big
implications for how bees 'think' about their world.  But can we move on?!
Or would Adrian Wenner, if he's reading this, like to chip in and comment on
this recent debate?

yours

Gavin.

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