For Ruth,

First I will humbly apologize for not referring to the archives before posting a few questions that a couple of which were apparently redundant.   I thought I had printed off all of the incoming posts on this issue but found quite a few that I did not have.   Somehow I only had one of the three that you posted on March 1st and it was a reply to Jerry B.   I will do a better job next time on my research before posting.   As I stated this has been a most interesting discussion and extremely informative and it will take me months to fully digest much of the information that is associated with DLH. My Dance Language file has expanded to several subfolders and is beginning to eat up considerable file space.    I am not a researcher, an entomologist, a neurobiologist or an anthropologist but simply a beekeeper.   Whether  there is a dance language or not does not really add directly to my ability to keep my bees alive,  produce honey, collect money and pay bills.   I have neither published or represented either side of this controversy and  would feel completely inept in arguing either side of the premise.    I am simply asking questions with my own selfish and completely personal interests in consideration for the purpose of education.   I need to satisfy my curiosity and attempt to assess the accuracy and performance of those I am choosing to believe.
Secondly, I thank you for taking the time to respond to my questions and will beg your favors and patience of a little more time and effort in addressing  this meager response.
Thirdly,  I will assure you that I do have a least a modest understanding of the importance of odor or scent in the evaluation of foraging behavior.   As Gavin said, the view that odor has no role in this has never been mentioned by anyone and it is not an issue.

My first question  in regard to the percentage of correctness was a precursor to the question that I would like to pose now and it is amazingly enough related to the expenditure of energy.    I believe that you answered the question correctly stating that it would only require one bee correctly interpreting cues from the dance to lend advantage  and a degree of credulity to the hypothesis.   I’m sure after reading your most recent post that you are very familiar with how important the expenditure of energy is to the survival of a species.   It has been theorized that mans evolution from non-erect to erect stature mainly attributed a conservation of energy to the species.   It requires less energy to motivate on two limbs as opposed to four.    This small conservation of energy allowed for only a slight advantage in the life of a female and reproduction rates were only fractionally advanced but enough to tip the advantage in this line of adaptation.  If, hypothetically speaking of course,    dance language behavior was interpreted correctly a certain percentage of the time, it would offer a savings in the expenditure of energy and  would give us reason to understand its very existence and persistence in the honeybee.   It would be difficult to give directions to 20 humans and expect them all to show up at a remote site.   My wife would say that if I were one of the twenty I would not show up as I do not listen to directions.   I would say that she would not show up as she has no ability for any form of spatial representations in her reasoning abilities.    It would be, hypothetically speaking again, an obvious expectation that if dance language conveyed information that much of it would be given or interpreted incorrectly, as in most cases, bees do not have the brain power  or neuronal plasticity of humans.   But if only a small percentage of the time interpretation was correct, it would justify the expenditure of energy in the behavior itself and perpetuate the behavior.

My second question is, as you pointed  out, only relevant if one supposes the existence of HDL and  this is an inappropriate question for you and I apologize.

Your response to question number three leaves me unsatiated.  I am hungering for more of an explanation.   I could for my own justifications, just as easily dismiss many of the experiments of Adrian with questions. 
Where there any efforts to analyze the exudations at the non-scented  feeding stations with the exposure of nasanov glands and perhaps other pheromones as well .  Were there any attempts to do gas chromatographic analysis of the actual pheromones released by those few that visited the non scented stations.   We know that with the 2-Heptanone pheromone that it acts both as an attractant and a repellent.   Perhaps there was enough  2-Heptanone released that the bees were actually in their increased dancing behavior issuing a warming.   It tastes like a duck but it doesn’t smell like a duck, so maybe it isn’t worth wasting your time if you’re hunting a duck.   And to say that we can fully explain the results of these tests as well might be inaccurate, since we do not have a complete understanding of dance behavior or honey bee pheromones (my belief), and perhaps ( for me in my limited understanding)  the results could be explained in other directions.   Von Frish also alluded to the difficulties in relating to  taste, especially sugar, when discussing the honeybee.   Perhaps like our human sense of taste, odor is as important.   I would not advertise or dance for a restaurant that was completely devoid of odor.   “Eat at Joe’s BBQ and you won‘t have to worry about any distracting odors of red meat sizzling over a blazing spit.
No don’t worry about the smell of our freshly baked rolls distracting you from the scent of those around you or our bathrooms in the hall.  Perhaps a crude analogy, but my point is how do we know that honeybees don’t have the same urge to say to the others: Stay the heck away from Joe’s!

When you get around to taking number 5 off the back burner, I would appreciate your thoughts.  I am well aware that ants in particular use sun orientation for navigation, but ants don’t dance or fly.   They are well able to leave scent trails for others to find, so dance is unnecessary.

This has been long enough so I won’t go any further other than to explain that I truly do appreciate your comments and Adrian’s lengthy  explanation of his testing in this field and I am no one to really challenge them, only question.  I never enter into a debate unless willing to take both sides of an issue.   I only do that if fully informed and I don’t have the time necessary to even begin to do that presently.   And that is my purpose for spending any time or energy in monitoring this discussion, which  is simply to find an answer or two and my expectation is that I will not, interpret and perhaps correctly evaluate all of the discussions heretofore and in the future as well.  But I will at least observe the dancing going on.  Thanks again for your time.  Tim Tucker

-- Visit www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l for rules, FAQ and  other info ---