Jerry

When you say that everyone has part of it right, do you mind if I quiz you a
little more on that?

> 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.

So what do you make of the displaced bees in Joe Riley's experiment flying
E, where the waggle dancers were assumed to be pointing them?  Are you
saying that there might be a technical reason for that, as in some
interference caused by the transponder?  I can't see why they would all fly
E (to where there was no feeder) unless they were responding to the waggle
dance.  One of Adrian's big concerns was that the bees would not be behaving
normally, having had a great big piece of hardware stuck on their back (I
can have some sympathy with that!).  But a fright response, if they have
such a thing, would surely send them scattering.

Your work with LIDAR and odor cues (look - I'm so impressed that I've even
allowed myself the US spelling for a change!) is truly marvellous.  Do you
think that it is possible that by placing reward close to the hive you are
encouraging odour(sorry!)-only searches?  It strikes me that so much of the
controversy could be ascribed to bees doing different things in different
experiments.  Close feeders cause round dances and odour-only searches;
distant feeders induce waggle-dances where both dance information
(approximate targeting) and odour (final location of site) operate.  The
bees' definition of close and far just might depend on other variables
(maybe even the strength of the colony).

> 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.

Don't need it, OK, but they might still use it as the most efficient way of
getting a strong foraging force quickly into the right area?

all the best

Gavin.

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