On Dec 7, 2006, at 4:37 AM, Bill Truesdell wrote:
> This thread has devolved quickly into non-beekeeping territory.
>
> However one thing stands out, and that is the lack of "informed
> discussion" on Jerry's research. Several of the comments are on the
> order of "it cannot be done" while it is being done, or do not
> understand the actual issues or research. Instead we are in the
> normal, for the Internet, my/your truth, science/Luddite, peace/war or
> military/social spending issues where strong views prevail and reason
> takes a backseat.
>
> So before Aaron has to fire another warning shot, it might be nice
> (but not as much fun) to actually get back to an "informed discussion
> of beekeeping" . I suggest the archives to learn much about Jerry's
> work.
>
> Truth is, the reason we do not see many researchers on this list is
> exactly because of the progression of this thread.
Bill is right on the mark, in part, I feel. As a researcher, I have
followed this thread with great interest, having considerable
experience in this area.
Beekeepers, though, should heed the basics of research approaches.
Let me provide some historical background on that point that relates to
the current discussion and to beekeeper concerns, information readily
available now on the Internet.
I was apparently the first to hear sounds produced by dancing bees
(e.g.: beesource.com/pov/wenner/besa1959.htm), when I found a
correlation between length of time sounds were produced during the
straight run of the waggle dance and the distance of food from the
hive. Since dancing usually occurs in darkness, sound seemed a great
possibility for communication of distance information. Having been
thoroughly indoctrinated about the "fact" of bee language by that time,
my experience in electronics, mathematics, and physics permitted me to
wow audiences with tape recordings and analysis of those sounds
(beesource.com/pov/wenner/sci1964.htm). The exotic sells!
That is, the exotic sells in science as well as in general. Rewards
and awards go to those who come up with the exotic (but no one ever
gets an award for undermining an exotic hypothesis). I became very
famous during the early 1960s and received invitations to speak at many
universities and requests to participate in symposia (including one at
a castle in Austria). That is all very heady stuff.
Our basic research then took a different turn when my co-workers and
I continued research "for the sake of facts instead of for the sake of
the hypothesis," as one pundit (Paul Feyerabend) phrased it. In doing
so, we stumbled onto the importance of conditioned response (see:
beesource.com/pov/wenner/learning.htm) during re-recruitment of
experienced to profitable food sources (a point of interest to
beekeepers). Well, the bee research "establishment" didn't want to
hear about that avenue, because "bee language" had become "ruling
theory." We then had a devil of a time getting our experimental
results into print.
Little did we know at the time (because such information had become
suppressed) that von Frisch had earlier published very revealing papers
along the same line (e.g., beesource.com/pov/wenner/bw1993.htm and
beesource.com/pov/wenner/frisch1943.htm).
(An interesting twist came in 2004, when some Australian bee
researchers published their results in Nature. They claimed that they
had "discovered" that experienced forager bees could be re-recruited
to food sources by odor cues alone. When I contacted them, they
expressed surprise that they had not known that our results had been
published decades earlier.)
In addition we obtained results in those early years that revealed
how very sensitive bees were to faint odors and how that behavior could
interfere with experimental results (e.g.,
beesource.com/pov/wenner/sci1969.htm). Again, we had great difficulty
getting those results into print. Because of our insistence upon
"attending to the facts instead of focusing on the theory," we had
unwittingly jump-started the honey bee dance language controversy.
Unlike many controversies, this one had a definite starting point at
the Salk Institute in La Jolla in the mid-1960s (see:
beesource.com/pov/wenner/aoac.htm).
Very recently a commentary by Sharon Begley ("Playing Catch-Up After
Lost time in Alzheimer's Labs") appeared in the Wall Street Journal
about Alzheimer's research (24 Nov. 2006). Apparently, research on
Alzheimer's had been locked into a "ruling theory" approach, with all
funds going into one avenue for two decades and none allowed for other
promising leads. That one avenue fizzled, requiring the catch-up now.
That exact same pattern occurred when we broached the possibility
that searching bees relied upon conditioned response and the odor of
food sources in the field during the recruitment process (e.g.,
beesource.com/pov/wenner/az1991.htm). We then could no longer get
grant funding nor get our manuscripts into print, encountering very
hostile reviews in both cases. (That may not seem like such a big
deal, but a researcher then loses all support for graduate students, as
well as two-ninths of a yearly salary for summer research — a really
big deal when stretched out over four decades; the price of integrity
is very high, indeed.)
In 1995 Jerry Bromenshenk had me to come to the University of
Montana for a Sigma Xi lecture and a seminar. While there, he picked
my brains about conditioning honey bees. As is my custom, scientific
openness, I spilled the beans about to condition bees to search for
particular odors and the implications for beekeeping. At the time I
knew nothing about Jerry's plans.
Of course, my co-workers and I have known for decades that bees
could be conditioned to search for the odor of just about anything.
The honey bee DNA genome sequence studies have just revealed that bees
have 170 odor receptor sites (a very high number) but only 10 such
sites for taste (a low number). Such results came as no surprise to
me; we have known about that odor sensitivity since the mid-1960s.
(Just think, all those millions spent on waggle dance research but
virtually none spent on the importance of odor during that past several
decades! And, what about the problems that beekeepers face every day?)
Will bee behavior be the "holy grail" for practical applications?
Having worked with honey bees since the 1940s, I tend toward John
Edward's comments. I worked with a research group a few years ago
(also with DARPA funding) and formed some conclusions. Will we be able
to use honey bees to find the location of land mines? Well, yes, bees
can be trained very quickly to search for the very faint odor of land
mines. However, we found that they are "too smart" and associate other
cues related to the reward (think shaving lotion, sun tan lotion, body
odor, color of the paper packets that contain the target odor), not
just those odors one might want to work with. Also, bees don't fly at
night or in high winds or while it rains. Nor do I think they would do
well at finding mines in jungle vegetation Most important, though, I
found it very difficult to train beekeepers to follow PRECISE
instructions about the training method (and we all know how independent
beekeepers are, don't we).
None of the above is a reflection of what Jerry might accomplish
with his monitoring techniques — I just don't think finding land mines
is one of the possibilities for bees.
However, I am very excited about this new awareness of researchers
around the world about the possibilities of learning, conditioning, and
odor reception capabilities of honey bees. Perhaps the lock-step focus
on bee "language" (a hypothesis, not a fact) can now be broken and
resources directed toward fruitful research in other areas.
Adrian
Adrian M. Wenner (805) 963-8508 (home office phone)
967 Garcia Road [log in to unmask]
Santa Barbara, CA 93103 www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/index.htm
"Having one view prevail is harmful; it becomes a belief system, not
science."
Zaven Khachaturian — 2006
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