quote:
He also argues that the probability of a bee detecting something (i.e., a flower, feeder,
etc.) is a function of the number of bees leaving and entering the hive
(corrected for those who linger at the hive entrance rather than foraging).

response:
Well that only leaves out a few things, like odor, color, wind, obstacles, the bees experience with the area, the dance communication, about everything that bees use to maintain a squadron of foragers. Sure, diffusion could account for the behavior of searching bees new to an area, but after a couple of hours, they're aren't new anymore. You could model a human search for a sandwich shop in a new city the same way, except that it would be affected by any number of other factors such as checking the phone book.


Peter
Ithaca