Hi. Fischer and all.



James Fischer who still believes that honeybees have a “dance language” (“DL”) claims that “DL” opponents should critique the published claims of “DL” supporters. “DL” opponents, starting with Dr. Adrian Wenner who launched the opposition to the “DL” hypothesis in 1967, have been trying to do exactly that for ages. Conducting an open dialog with “DL” supporters in scientific publications has however become almost impossible, especially since the 1973 endorsement of the “DL” by the Nobel Committee, because “DL” opponents have been too often simply denied access to print. I urge Fischer to read Wenner’s latest publication on the “DL” controversy  (which is available on the Internet, but as I found out, still took an inordinately long year and a half to be accepted for publication) in J. Insect Behav. (2002). I also urge him to carefully read all the rest of the material that “DL” opponents were able to squeeze into print, often against all odds. That should suffice to make him at least
 waver in his allegiance to the “DL” hypothesis. Incidentally, the freedom of the Internet has made it impossible to block “DL” opponents, but I know of no free scientific Internet forum, which is what is really needed in order to freely, openly, and properly deal with the “DL” controversy.



Re Fischer’s note on the Africanized bees: It turns out that their foragers do dance, which makes it even more unlikely that they do not recruit dance-attendants that invariably follow dancing foragers. If no dance-attendants of Africanized bees found any of the sources visited by the dancing foragers, this is most probably simply due to the fact that all honeybee recruits are generally very inefficient, which is exactly what is to be expected from use of odor alone all along.



I am very skeptical about Fischer’s claim of other examples of abstract thinking in honeybees, but I have been unable to access the website he provided regarding this issue. My computer advises me that there is an error there, and to please inform the webmaster of that.







Sincerely,

Ruth Rosin ("prickly pear")

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