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Date: | Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:22:26 -0400 |
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While the notion of a "busy bee" is instantly
refuted the first time one marks a forager
in an observation hive and tracks what it
does during a day, the "32 trips" is a
understatement.
Sure, foragers are not constantly foraging,
but I've personally seen the same marked
forager return to a feeder dish a dozen
times in a single morning. Researchers
with more patience likely have higher
counts.
A few factoids quoted from Jurgen Tautz's
book "The Buzz about Bees" (soon available
in English!) will help here:
1) The energy content of a full load of
nectar amounts to 500 J (joules).
2) During an average lifespan, a forager
carries 50 kJ back to the nest.
3) The foraging force of a colony, involving
more than 100,000 individuals during a summer,
undertakes several million foraging lights, and
carries about 3-4 million kJ of energy back
to the hive.
What can we conclude from these averages?
a) 50kJ is 100 times 500 J, so 100 trips per
forager career seems more reasonable
minimum in light of more recent science.
b) Many forager careers are cut short by
misadventure, which lowers averages
drastically.
c) The numbers are inherently sloppy. Even
the book I quoted is inconsistent in its
counting and math - re-read (3) above, and
note that "more than 100,000" bees making
"several million foraging flights", implies
tens of trips per bee rather than hundreds
or even a hundred.
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