Years ago, Bob Madsen, produced a video of bees reponding to hot air being released into the center of the brood nest.  Almost as soon as the hot air started flowing, the bees converged on the source and  somehow compressed the hot air, directly it in a stream  toward the hottest, outer part of the hive.  They controlled the air just like a nozzle on the end of a firehose can direct a stream of water.


It was an incredible demonstration of their collective behavior  in the presence of an unusual event.




Couple years ago, in NZ, we found that the water was so corrosive that stainless sensors to control syrup flow to our bee conditioning systems failed.  We finally replaced the stainless sensors with small plastic floats.  Worked great day one.  Next day, all of the syrup supply bags were empty.  First thought, some larger animal was feeding on the syrup.  But no, it was the bees.  When the tray refilled with syrup, the bees would pile onto the float.  Their weight would push it down, and the pump would keep on pumping.  Everyone had a wild syrup party.  We had to put screens over the floats to keep the bees off.  It made us wonder if somehow they figured the system out?


Today a got a message from Kay who was testing our acoustic diagnostic app in TX.  The app records bee sounds and based on the sound analyzes  for issues such as pests, diseases, and AHB.  The recording screen of our app has a honey bee icon near the bottom of the  screen on a Smart Phone, just above the phone's microphone.   Kay said she thought individual bees were checking out the 2D bee.  That's hard to say, since bees will crawl over a phone slid into the entrance of the hive.


Today she sent  the following report from TX:



I "Tried to scan a hot (Africanized) hive with app on Android phone but it failed to finish scans. When screen was up, 4 times the bees "pressed" the Bee icon ... which brings up forum and pauses the app. I restored app but bees repeated. Bees are amazing as social bees must want to see forum, lol!  When I turn phone so silver back is up, bees cover phone and app stops.  Is a "bee to go to forum icon" needed during scan?"


Bees piling onto a foreign object (e.g. phone in the entrance isn't surprising).  However, this has to be the first time that bees, by themselves, directly logged into the internet.    Fools that we are, we assumed we'd have to record bees.  But they can talk directly to the net.





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