Adrian Wenner claimed that the re-discovered early papers of von Frisch
which say that bees locate food by odour alone, support his (Adrian's)
odour hypothesis.

But, the point is that when von Frisch discovered the dance language,
this new hypothesis supplanted his odour hypothesis. In the light of new
data, von Frisch rejected his odour hypothesis in favour of his dance
language hypothesis.

However, my comprehensive hypothesis (2000. Bee World 81(1): 5-10)
suggests that both the odour and dance languages hypotheses are partly
right, in that bees do indeed use the information in the dance, but in
two different ways:
1. some bees go to the indicated food source to most quickly exploit
the already discovered food;
2. some bees use the information in the dance to avoid the indicated
source, and to head in other directions to search for odour plumes in
order to most quickly locate and so exploit new sources of the food.

Several papers published during the last few years on communication in
other species of social bees in the genus Melipona have shown that they
have an ability to pass on information about food sources using a
`language'. There are several hundred species in the Meliponinae, of
which only a few have been studied so far. It will be most interesting
to see if evidence of `language' is found for any other species.

Barry J Donovan
Private Bag 4704
Christchurch
New Zealand.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
-- Visit www.honeybeeworld.com/BEE-L for rules, FAQ and  other info ---
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::