This message contained some interesting observations which I thought
might interest the Bee-L listers:

------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Date:          Wed, 28 Jul 1999 21:22:39 +0930
From:          The Scott Family <[log in to unmask]>
Organization:  Rabbits, Inc.
To:            [log in to unmask]
Subject:       Beekeppers and eclipses of the sun

    Hello ibra, or is it Dr. Pamella Munn (?)
    I was interested to hear that a total eclipse of the sun is due to
ocurr in parts of Europe during November this year.  I kept bees in
southern Australia for a period and was lucky enough to observe their
behavior during a total eclipse.  This eclipse occured in 1976 over
parts of central Victoria, Victoria being the smallest Australian
mainland State, and the most south-east.  Perhaps you might be in a
position to put my observations to others in Europe.
    We arrived at our bushland site a couple of hours before the eclipse
and saw bees coming and going from the 12 hives we had.  From a time of
about 20 minutes before the eclipse, all activity outside the hives
ceased.  This behaviour continued throughout the eclipse and after.
This last point seemed the most interesting to me.  Apparently no bees
were "caught out" by the eclipse, they were all home in advance.  We
confirmed this observation by watching for another hour or so after the
eclipse.  The eclipse occured about two hours before sunset, so we did
not observe the second hour (we had to drive home), ie. we missed the
last hour before sunset, but certainly no single bee was seen flying in
the first hour after the eclipse.
    The behaviour of vertebrates around us was in contrast;  sheep and
cattle wailed in confusion; the birds went through routines of evening
and morning calls, but our dog didn't really notice anything strange I
think.  I was amazed by all, especially the total darkness and the
extremely quick "dawn" at the end of it.
    I thought it raised some interesting questions.  Bees navigate by
the sun and its temporal zenith and azimuth etc., but otherwise with
compound eyes they should have not much understanding of the movement or
presence of the moon, especially during daylight hours (not that they
peek at the moon and stars at night either!).  So what then, how did
they predict the eclipse?  An understanding of gravitational fields?
One might say probably not, since this would hardly be an evolutionary
force when total eclipses of the sun are so rare in time, given a set
point in space.  The only hypothesis I can come up with is that bees do
in fact rely on the sun for navigation, that the shortcomings of
compound eyes have forced a sense of gravitational fields in order to
track the sun especially in cloudy situations and that (don't laugh,
because I can't think of any other explanation) they have thus developed
a means of calculation of movement of the heavenly bodies and were able
to predict the eclipse.  I don't know.  Ask your beekeepers?
    I'd be most interested to hear some feedback.
    All the best and thanks.  John Scott. (presently studying at
Northern Territory University Australia).

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