Christina -

I am not sure of its importance, but your question is interesting.  I
would like to know if truly the percentage of beekeepers who are color
blind is the same as the population at large... just because I think
individuals drawn to keeping bees are an interesting (and in some ways
atypical) subset of the population.

A couple of years ago I was part of a study that compared the personality
of beekeepers with the general population.  We sampled about 1400
beekeepers on five continents.  I was drawn to this by my subjective guess
that beekeepers were more introverted than the average man on the street. 
They preferred to spend time with bees than with people.   I was curious.

My hypothesis proved to be statistically supported.  Beekeeper tend to be
more introverted.  Our data also showed a statistical difference in two
other personality factors.  Beekeepers tended to be more emotionally stable
and to be more open to new experiences.

I would contend that like people in other endeavors(golf, sky diving,
CPAs...), beekeepers are different as a group differ from the norm.  Not
better or worse, just different.

Larry Krengel
Marengo, IL USA


-----------------------------------------------
On Thu, 11 Jul 2013 20:17:30 +0000, Christina Wahl <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> The question came up:  How many beekeepers are colorblind?
> 
> The most common form of colorblindness is red-green (inability to
> distinguish between red and green) and since it is a sex-linked
deficiency,
> mostly men have it.  In the twenty years I've been teaching biology, I
only
> found one woman with a very mild version of red-green color blindness
(we
> were very excited about it, she was less so...but said it explained why
she
> had trouble matching clothes).
> 
> Around 10% of men in the general population are colorblind.  Here's a
good
> source with a table:
> 
> http://www.colour-blindness.com/general/prevalence/
> 
> So, even though beekeepers are an unusual subset of the human population
> (or we like to think so!), we can assume they are a random sample of the
> general population and therefore I'd say about 1 in 10 male beekeepers
are
> colorblind, and no women beekeepers are colorblind.
> 
> Christina
> 
>              ***********************************************
> The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
> LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
> http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html
-----------------------------------------------

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html