Michael Swintosky requested the following clarification:

>Question:  Are honeybees (or other bees/insects for that matter) capable of
>leaving a scent of their own to mark the location of a food source?

[That is, marking akin to other animals that mark their territory via
urination or feces piles.]

   In the late 1960s Josue A. Nunez conducted experiments, results of which
indicated that a bee, after draining a flower of nectar, might leave a
scent mark of some kind such that it or other bees would recognize such
scent as the sign of an empty blossom.

   Early in our experimental program, we recognized what we called the
"dirty dish syndrome."  Foragers repeatedly visiting a dish inadvertently
provide an odor accumulation; hence, even though sucrose solution has no
odor, the dish soon does.

   To counter that artifact, each 15 minutes we set out a clean dish and
filled it with fresh sugar solution.  The dirty dish went into a tight
plastic bag.

   Our success at such sanitation efforts is reflected in the following
quotation from our 1969 SCIENCE crucial paper:

"[Consider]...the extremely low recruitment rate of regular foragers
collecting unscented sucrose at an unscented site.  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."

   One can easily see how a not-so-careful researcher could obtain
recruitment to "unscented" food by not taking sufficient care while running
an experiment.

   Those and other results are summarized in Chapter 10 of our 1990 ANATOMY
OF A CONTROVERSY... book.

                                                        Adrian



Adrian M. Wenner                    (805) 963-8508 (home phone)
967 Garcia Road                     (805) 893-8062  (UCSB FAX)
Santa Barbara, CA  93106

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*  "History teaches that having the whole world against you
*       doesn't necessarily mean you will lose."
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*         Ashleigh Brilliant's Pot-Shot # 7521, used by permission
*
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