>>> I don't remember if he lists a preference by type of tree.
> "We made external observations on 39 nests in hollow trees.
> We collected and dissected 21 of these tree nests to describe
> the nest architecture. No one tree genus strongly
> predominates among bee trees."
> [Quote from Paper]
This is a side issue, but the quote was not a statement about the preference
of bees, it was a statement about what was found in one specific and unique
area, one that lacks oak trees.
It is very often misleading to read (or quote) only the abstract of a work
without context, and more misleading to attempt to use such a statement to
attempt to argue with a more general statement about many more feral
colonies over a much larger area. The full text pdf is linked below. In the
paper, you will read that the statement is about a limited-area survey
around Ithaca, NY.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Thomas_Seeley/publication/269996264_The
_nest_of_the_honey_bee_Apis_mellifera_L/links/549deaa30cf2d6581ab642e2/The-n
est-of-the-honey-bee-Apis-mellifera-L.pdf
https://tinyurl.com/y4lygeq6
The Ithaca area is just a bit of a special case, being an area where the
USDA finds a distinct lack of oak trees in their surveys, updated as
recently as 2014. So, even ignoring the tiny dataset of 39 nests
("statistically insignificant, given the number of feral colonies one might
find in a full-county-wide survey) in one small area, what that statement
says is that bees will utilize what they can find when they can't find a
best-case scenario. They ignored and did not count nests in man-made
structures, so we don't have that ranked in the "preferences of bees" list,
either.
See the link below to the USDA updated mapping.
https://www.fs.fed.us/nrs/pubs/rmap/rmap_nrs5.pdf
https://tinyurl.com/yxjrazth
But, when looking for feral colonies, one is well-served by learning what an
Oak tree looks like, and focusing attention on them.
I was not working hard, impatient, easily distracted, and hunting bee trees
on a lark in spare moments, and still I found a lot more than 39 bee trees
every year in the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests (ranging
between Winchester, VA at the North, and running down the VA/WVA border
along the ridgetops down to near Bristol TN, a 300-mile long by roughly
10-15 mile-wide swath - the Forest Service says the total is just under 3000
square miles of Forest)
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