Hello All

I am a new beekeeper - and a true fence sitter when it comes to the DL
and all its controversy.  But after reading the lengthy discussion on
this list, I realized that I had quite accidentally performed an
experiment which seems to disprove the odor alone hypothesis.

The honey flow has paused where I am at and I am busy cleaning up all
the honey supers.  As part of that exercise, I end up with a lot of
cappings wax (mixed with honey).  Not having a solar wax melter (it is
on my list of projects) I decided to give the honey back to the bees by
placing all the cappings in a tub and carrying it out to the hives.

Needless to say, there is not a lot of foraging activity right now -
just a lot of bees hanging out in front of the hives.  The first tub
that I placed in the Apiary was brought in with the wind blowing at my
back straight towards the hives (again - this was quite accidental as I
am a new beekeeper).  Before I got close to the table to set it down -
there were thousands of bees leaving all of the hives and headed
straight towards the tub.  No time for dancing, No time for any real
communication between the bees.  Bees were not flying in random
directions.  They were essentially coming in straight against the wind
and circling above my head and landing in the tub.  Every hive had gone
from no activity to intense activity in less than the thirty seconds
that it took to walk over and set down the tub.  At the time I remember
thinking "they must have smelled the honey and come running."

The next tub that I brought out I decided that I was going to bring it
in with the wind blowing in my face (from behind the hives).  When I did
this - there was no change in activity at the hives.  The bees were just
milling around like they have been wont to do recently.  After
approximately 10 minutes I noticed a single bee had landed in the tub
and was filling up.  After about another ten minutes - one of the hives
had become incredibly active and there were again lots of bees landing
in the tub and filling up.  The other hives joined in slowly but the end
result was that all hives were again sending out foragers to collect the
free honey.  I would also state that on the second day the first wave of
foragers did not go out, circle downwind, and then find the honey - as
one would expect if odor alone was responsible.  They pretty much acted
like they knew where the honey was.

From this accidental experiment I am absolutely convinced that the bees
can smell the honey and that it was a powerful inducement for all the
hives (I know that I will never personally carry a tub in from downwind
again). But it seems equally obvious that on the second day there was
some communications within the first hive (and eventually between all
the hives) that told the idle foragers exactly where the goodies were.
The communications between hives could have been entirely visual
(increased activity in one hive caused the foragers in the other hives
to "check it out") or based on some odor trail left by the foragers
returning to the first hive.  But without some effective communications
between bees I can not explain the behaviors that I observed.

Some other small points and background.  These are new hives installed
from packages in early June.  This is my first year as a beekeeper.  So
any attempt to refute odor as an inducement by stating that the bees
were somehow conditioned to expect honey when they see a beekeeper
approaching with a tub would be silly at best (at least on the first
day).  However, that could be used as a partial explanation on the
second day as the bees probably knew that there was honey in that tub.
But most (if not all) of the bees could not have seen me place the
second tub.

I would be very interested in hearing from any of the dance language
antagonists on an explanation for these empirical observations.

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