Adrian said:

> Seeley's response to Mia (as she posted it) was loaded with
> qualifications (including, "Evidently, a dance follower learns only
> the general vicinity of the recruitment target, she flies to this
> location, and then often has to execute a lengthy search to pinpoint
> the recruitment target."), a statement that contrasts sharply with his
> own statement in the book

The statement you mention was made in reference to the specific case
of a single feeder dish, as opposed to an area of nectar plants.
As such, it was an astute observation that bees' foraging practices
are clearly not optimized for feeder dishes.

More "realistic" tests would be those that allow the bees to forage on
actual nectar-producing plants, spread over an area. This is why we
went off on the minor tangent of "harmonic radar".

The folks using the harmonic radar have some very interesting data.
They intend to do further tests, but their results so far seem to
support the stance that bees do leave the hive and follow the
vectors (dare I say "bee lines"?) described by dances, arriving
in the area indicated by the dancer.  As the researchers say on
their website (URL in my Bee-L posting of 10/14/03):

  "Von Frisch published the now famous 'waggle dance' which
  he claimed bees could use communicate the position of
  suitable forage areas...  We have used harmonic radar to
  measure the flight trajectories of bees recruited after
  observing the waggle dance, this has enabled us to settle
  (hopefully once and for all) this... in favour of Von Frisch.
  We are also examining our flight data to see what effect the
  wind has on flight behaviour, paying particular attention to
  the role odour plumes have in the recruitment of bees to new
  forage sites."

> Which is it?  Do bees "fly directly out" as given in the original
> hypothesis,

Yes, and the harmonic radar studies are yet another set of data
that fail to reveal any sort of "searching", zigzagging, downwind
approaches, or what have you.

> or do they search about for a long time,

Only when trying to locate a single feeder dish, not surprising
given than a feeder dish is only a few inches in diameter, and
bees are more accustomed to foraging with larger "target" areas
like fields of clover, orchards, long runs of wild roses along
fence lines, weedy patches, etc.

> The bottom line remains, though:  Beekeepers have not benefited one
> bit in regard to their beekeeping operations by using the dance
> language hypothesis during the past half century of its existence.
> That fact carries more weight than virtually any of the rhetoric we
> have had on the subject these past few years.

If "dance" is useless to beekeepers, then so would be "odor",
for exactly the same reasons.

You continue to work in the area because it interests you!
Good for you!  Please continue.  Expect others to also continue.


                jim (purveyor of subtle schadenfreude
                 to the trade since about 1973)

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