Jerry seems to be offering the very unique work done in
landmine detection (where there is no actual nectar to
bring back to the hive and dance about), as some sort of
rebuttal to the radar-tracking done with feeders (where
there IS nectar to be brought back to the hive and dance about).
I will attempt to explain why Jerry's data is absolutely correct
within the specific and highly artificial conditions of his work,
but only within those artificial conditions. As such, Jerry's
work cannot be the basis for conclusions about how bees act under
more "normal" conditions, where there is actual foraging with
rewards to be done, rather than nothing but the empty promises
offered by Jerry to his bees.
> Bottom line, carrying a large device with a vertical OR trailing
> antenna... And grabbing them to put the things on is EXTREMELY
> disruptive.
But in the radar study at issue, what data is indicative of
disruption? It would appear that, despite the physical burden of
the diodes, the bees still flew with clear purpose, amazingly in
compliance with dance vectors, even when being "fooled" by being
released at unexpected locations.
> LIDAR... Our laser maps of bees searching for targets
> by odor can be seen online (Optics Express 13 5853)
Correct me if I am over-simplifying, but the basic scheme of your
tests was to introduce feed with a "landmine-like" scent, and get
some of the bees to speculatively forage for new forage locations
(not prompted by dances). As a certain percentage of foragers will
always go on "purely speculative" sorties, this was a elegant
approach to finding landmines.
Jerry's work is waaay kewl, but he is exploiting the well-known
behavior of bees under very specific artificial and unnatural
conditions, trying to get the bees excited about going out and
looking for "nectar" when there are no actual blooms. (It may
sound "cruel" to do this, but if it can remove landmines, my vote
is to frustrate the heck out of the bees - they'll get over it.)
In fact, if any actual groceries had been found, this would have
screwed up the test, as dancing would have vectored bees to areas
of actual forage, rather than sending them out in essentially
random directions in search of more of the "blooms" rumored to be
blooming by the introduced feed. It would have screwed up the
deployment of foragers, and limited the search area. So admit it,
finding landmines won't work at all if there is anything of value
to bees blooming in the area at the time of the trial. :)
> Also, keep in mind, landmines don't have any reward AND our
> conditioning occurs at the hive, not in the field.
Yes, as I observed above, a situation not found in nature is being
created to exploit the behavior of bees.
> Both our video and the lasers show bees locking on and tracking
> odor plume from these vapor sources from many yards away.
No surprise there, the radar study at issue clearly showed the same
sort of strategy, to follow the dance vectors for the bulk of the
flight (hundreds or thousands of yards) and then, when within range
of the area of interest, to use sensory input, including odor, to
pick a specific bloom on which to forage, from "many yards away".
The lack of odor in the feeder dishes in the radar study is what
resulted in so many bees making it to the correct area, but not the
feeder itself.
> That means, using even the most conservative plume models, that the
> bees were recognizing vapor trails in the parts per quadrillion or less.
The statement above is a bit of a non-sequitur when one recalls that
the bees in the radar study were flying and foraging downwind.
I think it should be clear that any "odor plume" would have been
downwind of the foraging targets, not anywhere else, certainly
not along the bulk of the flight path from hive to feeder.
> Now, as per painting bees... the bees are SO sensitive to vapors,
> you can more or less fry their olfactory system (overload it), at
> least for the short term.
Yes, but in the radar study at issue, there was nothing to smell -
there was no overt scent being used, which, not surprisingly resulted
in many bees following the dance vectors to the area of the feeders,
yet being unable to "find" the feeder, exactly what one would expect
of bees used to basing their long-distance travel on dance vectors,
and their final approach on odor.
> We also are convinced (and we can't fully answer this conjecture until
> we have the new lasers and some serious field time with them) that
> hanging anything on a bee may drastically alter bee flight, including
> orientation.
Of course there's an impact. People have been doing all sorts of
unspeakable things to bees for centuries, the most basic being to
attach a feather or trailing thread to a foraging bee in an attempt
to slow down the flight of the bee and thereby do some "lazy man's
bee-lining". Funny how even extreme burdens in terms of both weight
and aerodynamic impact do not make bees so burdened any less able to
find their way home to the hive. :)
> our bias is that any use of a food reward - near the area that you
> think that a dance might be sending bees- invalidates the experiment.
Yes, it would invalidate YOUR experiments, as you want bees to
function in the near-psychotic state of having to go randomly
search for nectar without any actual blooms in the area!
But a "reward" is the only thing that is going to prompt a bee to
dance at all. So, it depends on one's goal, and Jerry's goal is
to exploit the purely speculative sorties, keeping all the bees
that are recruited by dances as close to the hive as possible.
In the radar study, the bees released away from the hive flew a
pattern that assured that they would never find a feeder, yet
they still flew that pattern. So the LACK of a reward in these
cases clearly showed that the bees simply were not be somehow
"homing in" on an odor, as there was nothing there. To trump
the entire hand, they were flying downwind!
> We use food as a reward, but at the hive. (Well, within a few yards
> of it). If the dance is sending foragers out to the food source --
> they should all end up at the feeder dish beside the hive.
I hope Jerry is making a little joke here - of course 100% of the
foraging force is never going to blindly focus on the same single
source, the whole "hedging of bets" and "diversity in foraging
options" is so well-known, it has been well-described in book
form for years (Tom Seeley's "Wisdom of The Hive" would be about
the best I could suggest on this).
> There's no food anywhere near the things that we get them to search
> for. Why would the dance send them to a non-producing 'food' source.
It clearly does not - the bees foraging away from the feeder are
"hedging the hive's bets" by looking for OTHER patches of the blooms
falsely said to be "blooming" due to the nectar coming in the door
from the nearby feeder, as any hive will do. So they find landmines.
Nice way to "hack" bees, but not very useful in describing what the
bees might do if landmines provided nectar.
(Of course, I would simply design landmines that WOULD provide
artificial nectar heavily scented with random scents that masked
the odor of a landmine, and REALLY mess with your bees' heads,
and screw up your whole detection scheme if I were employed by
Acme Landmines. Naw, I would never work on landmines.)
> For all of our work... relies on odor and odor alone.
Yes, because you have set up conditions that prompt bees to go on
exactly the speculative sorties that you'd like them to do, which
this is well-known bee behavior, not at all relevant to basic issues
of how bees utilize "Odor" and "Dance" in the real world.
> The dance, if it does what people contend, should be working against us.
Nope. A colony always hedges its bets, there are always some number of
foragers looking for "yet another" hitherto undiscovered patch of what's
blooming. THOSE are the bees that are finding your landmines.
> Why look elsewhere?
For the simple reason that, in the worldview of a bee, any ONE nectar source
is absolutely certain to "dry up" or become "over-exploited" at some point,
so "maverick" bees will always ignore the dances, and go out to try and
discover an even BETTER place to brag about.
> P.S. What does the dance do? Frankly, I don't know.
> But I do know, the bees don't need it to direct foraging.
If you have any doubt about the relative value of "dance" versus "odor"
to actual real-world colonies of bees in real-world conditions, go try
and locate some landmines when the entire field in which the landmines
are buried is covered in clover, dandelions, vetch, and other blooms.
You will get thousands of misleading tracks to slog through, 'cause even if
your artificial "bribe" is 90% sugar, a heck of a lot of bees will still go
for the clover and vetch.
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