I appreciate the opportunity to respond to Jim Fischer's solid
adherence to the dance language hypothesis.  It provides an
opportunity to present information to others about this sort of
research.

   Jim wrote that searching bees in his example could find UNSCENTED
sugar solution, as in his statement:

>Just to make life harder for the girls, I used 100% UNSCENTED sugar
>solution in sterile dishes, and trained across the entire length
>of my 500 acre field.  Conditions included "no wind", "upwind",
>and "downwind".  Lots of recruits, no scent, no distractions (500 acres
>of freshly-cut hay stubble).

    There are several problems with the above situation, problems that
are covered quite fully in Chapter 8 of our 1990 book, ANATOMY OF A
CONTROVERSY.

1)  Bees can become conditioned to any odor, even extremely faint
ones (in a few parts per billion or less).  That fact has bedeviled
many a researcher, since bees can associate something so subtle as
deodorant, shampoo, or cut grass with a food reward.

2)  Jim worked in a field of "freshly-cut hay stubble."  Wow!  What
an incredible mix of potential odors that can cling to the hairs of
foraging bees.  Figure 8.1 on p. 134 of our 1990 book illustrates how
that circumstance can influence results.

3)  Really pure sucrose solution has a vapor pressure of zero (Merck
Index listing).  That means that no sugar molecules pass into the air
above the solution.  That also means that honey bees cannot smell
well-prepared sugar solution.

4)  One may think he/she has an odor-free sugar solution, but care in
preparation is all important.  Most small lots of sugar now come in
paper bags.  Unless one takes proper precautions, any sugar solution
prepared from that source has a slight paper odor (we labelled that
problem "paper factor" on p. 133 of our book).

5)  With super care, a pure sucrose solution yields zero recruits --
covered on p. 134 of our book in the following passage:

"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."

    Of course, we set out clean dishes and fresh solution each 15
minutes to make sure that the odor of visiting bees didn't accumulate.

    Consider a more recent example.

    Early last month a group of us had thousands of foragers from 14
colonies collecting unscented sucrose from a group of
double-compartment dishes.  One compartment had the unscented sucrose
solution.  The adjacent compartment in each case had an extremely
faint odor that could cling to the foraging bees as they drank.

    Searching recruits readily found those dishes, but only because of
the odor packet in the second compartment.

    A skeptical observer insisted that bees could find the unscented
sucrose solution because of its "odor."

    To demonstrate that such was not the case, I set out a bowl of
unscented solution that I had personally prepared and located a short
way from any of the double-compartment dishes.

    During a two-day period, no bees landed and drank from that single
dish, even though thousands of bees located and drank unscented
sucrose from the double compartment dishes that had an associated
odor in the second compartment.

    No, I do not see how honey bees could find REALLY PURE unscented
sucrose solution.  That feature makes them the ultimate generalist
forager and means that we could increase pollination efficiency by
pumping scented sucrose (scent of the crop we wanted bees to visit)
into colonies -- if only bee researchers could "get off the dime" and
investigate the best means to do so.

    In fact, that is exactly what Russian workers and von Frisch
accomplished in the late 1930s and early 1940s.  See the following
for a summary of some of von Frisch's results on that score:

http://www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/frisch1943.htm

    When can we expect bee researchers to heed the evidence and begin
to investigate the importance of wind and odors in honey bee foraging
patterns?  I hope soon -- for the good of the beekeeping community.

                                                        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

*****************************************************
*    "We not only believe what we see:
*  to some extent we see what we believe."
*
*                           Richard Gregory (1970)
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