The study (immediately touted in the popular scientific news-media all
over),  was done without using any scented food. The authors believe that
their results provide an experimental confirmation of the honeybee "dance
language" (DL) hypothesis.

Is that so?

No upwind zigzag (a response to attractive odors), was observed in any of
the radar-tracks. Only 2 of the tracked bees "landed at the feeder".
However, (based on personal communication with one of the authors, U.
Greggers), they actually landed on the feeder-stand, but never found the
food, or the feeder (even when they got "within 8 cm. of the feeder").. The
authors cite the statement by Sandeman & Tautz, that honeybee-recruits find
odorless sources (such as water, nest-sites and ivy flowers), in nature too.
The statement is groundless. Nest-sites are never odorless in nature.
Neither are water-sources, which invariably have odors from vegetation at
the edge of the water, or rotting vegetation in the water. According to
personal communication (from Tautz), the statement regarding ivy flowers is
based on old information scattered in the literature. Such information is
invariably based on v. Frisch's erroneous conclusion that honeybees have a
very poor, human-like sensitivity to odors, which led him to erroneously
assume that flowers which are odorless to humans, are also odorless to
honeybees. The statement that honeybee-recruits can find odorless sources is
also refuted by the results reported by Wenner (in his 1971 book), where no
new bees ever found the feeder when he removed all possible odor-sources, in
a dry desert (which enabled a far stricter control of odor-sources than was
possible in the environment in which the study by Riley et al. was done).
The statement is also refuted by the fact that even the 2 tracked bees that
landed on the feeder-stand in the study by Riley et al., never found the
feeder.

However, as soon as you add scent to the feeder, you are bound to obtain new
bees arriving at the feeder invariably (based on observations on thousands
of new-arrivals), through an upwind zigzag, from as far as the bees can only
be spotted  by observers at the source, with the naked eye, i.e. from a
distance of at least 10 m. away. The fact that recruits never arrive through
a shorter upwind zigzag, alone suffices to discredit the DL hypothesis. (The
point was first raised by Wenner in print in 1974.)

The addition of scent to the feeder can, in no way, prevent recruits from
using their DL, if they only have a DL; all the more so, since they are
expected to use it in nature, where they find only odorous sources. The
inevitable conclusion is that Riley et al. succeeded in experimentally
confirming that honeybees have a DL, which cannot exist in nature, i.e. in
the real world. I am quite willing to settle for this resolution of the DL
controversy, because a DL that cannot exist in the real world, can not exist
at all.

It is possible to point out various other problems with the study, and its
results. But space limitations prevent me from going into further details
here.

Sincerely,
Ruth Rosin ("Prickly pear")

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