On Dec 4, 2005, Isis Glass wrote (not about bees being able to fly):
“I recently learned of a study of the bee dances, where a graduate
student
was documenting how the different modes of dancing relate to distance.
The
bees were trained to a series of distant sites using sugar syrup.”
My comment:
That reminds me of a statement by 1947 Nobel Laureate Andre Gide:
“Everything has been said [and/or done] before, but since nobody
listens, we have to keep going back and begin all over again.
What that graduate student did confirms what I did back in the late
1950s when I found a correlation between dance elements and the
distance bees forage from their hive. I documented that correlation
for my PhD dissertation. I was apparently the first to hear the
sounds of dancing bees, recorded them, and sent tape recordings and
sonograph displays to von Frisch in 1958. Several years later our
experimental results forced me to recognize that correlations do not
prove causality and that von Frisch’s earlier work on recruitment to
food crops by odor sufficed. On that issue, see:
www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/jib2002.htm
Isis also wondered: “… how does your understanding of how bees
find feeding sources account for their ability to lead recruits to
‘unscented’ food sources?”
My comment: This issues comes up repeatedly on BEE-L Also, someone
else at about the same time mentioned the hypothesis that Nasanov
exudates attract bees to food sources.
For a response, we can follow David Hawkins’ advice, when he wrote,
“Mathematics is the language of science.”
I provide here quantitative results obtained from a simple
experiment that any beekeeper can conduct. In fact, it would be a good
way to get young people interested in beekeeping and science, an
experiment that will yield hard data (results) that apply to both of
the above problems.
We trained 10 bees to visit a feeding station with scented food;
all unmarked arrivals were caught and dropped into a bottle of ethyl
alcohol. We tallied each trip by each marked bee, the number of new
recruits, and the number of Nasanov gland exposures by regular foragers
during each 15-minute period. By this process we gained many hundreds
of data points.
One variation was to repeat the experiment many days, with a lowered
amount of scent in the sugar solution on subsequent days. The results
were very clear. Lessening the amount of scent in the food resulted in
an ever greater exposure of the Nasanov gland but an ever fewer
recruits finding the station.
In other experiments we found that ever-smaller amounts of odor in
the food resulted in ever more dancing in the hive by regular foragers.
By being especially careful about how we prepared the sugar solution
(including hot distilled water to gas off any odors during mixing) and
how clean we kept the glass dishes (replacing dishes each 15 minutes
with clean ones), we eventually managed to end up with essentially no
recruits when we used unscented solution — that result occurred despite
the fact that Nasanov gland exposure was at an all time high with
unscented sugar solution!
In one case, we published: “On 25 July 1968, in the absence of a
major nectar source for the colony, we received only five recruits from
a hive of approximately 60,000 bees after ten bees had foraged at each
of four stations for a total of 1374 round trips during a 3-hour
period.” For full results, you can access the following:
www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/sci1969.htm
www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/EXC_NG.htm
However, one cannot stress just how readily sugar solution or the
feeding station can gain an odor during these experiments. Deodorant
use by assistants, crushed vegetation near the feeding station, and
many other extraneous odors can give experimenters a false impression
that they have had successful recruitment with unscented sugar
solution. For instance, bees landing on a dish leave their odor on the
glass (body odor). Searching bees can home in on that contaminant odor
(hence the need to frequently switch to clean dishes).
We published all of our results from such experiments in
peer-reviewed journals, but you will be very hard-pressed to find
inclusion of those quantitative results in scholarly research papers or
volumes (not our failing!).
For practical applications of our work with odor and recruitment (in
non-refereed publications) see:
www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/abjoct1998a.htm
www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/abjnov1998b.htm
www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/abjdec1998c.htm
One can also conduct a very simple experiment to ascertain the
attractiveness of Nasanov gland exudates to bees that search for food
sources. I make my own swarm lures, with a recipe provided by Justin
Schmidt. (These lures are quite effective at getting swarms into swarm
hives, as others who have used the ones I make can confirm.) I
routinely place a fresh lure in a clean Pyrex custard dish on a ledge
just outside my office door in the garden. During swarm season, scout
bees routinely inspect the lure. However, outside of swarm season, no
bees show up at the dish, even during periods of nectar dearth.
Should anyone want to repeat such a procedure this coming season, I
will be happy to provide some swarm lures free. Just request them from
me at my e-mail address rather than post such requests on Bee-L.
With all best wishes.
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
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"For what a man more likes to be true, he more readily believes."
Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
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