Adiran said:
> Jim wrote that searching bees in his example could find
> UNSCENTED sugar solution...
Yes, I did. It was prepared with care. Bottled sucrose
was used. You can buy it at the chemistry supply store.
Such preparations are odor-free.
So much for "food odor".
> Jim worked in a field of "freshly-cut hay stubble." Wow!
> What an incredible mix of potential odors that can cling
> to the hairs of foraging bees.
But any odor that might be produced by one area of the field
would also be produced by many others. The odors would be
highly similar, if not identical from all points. I repeated
the tests under different wind directions, and the bees were
equally able to find my sugar dish when it was "upwind",
"downwind", and in "no wind".
So much for "locality odor".
This was one 4-inch dish in a 500 acre field, cut at a very low
height by my neighbor the dairy farmer, with no remaining blooms
of any sort. If I had done the tests before the hay was bailed
and removed, it would have literally been "a needle in a haystack".
As the hay had been removed to his hay barn, it was a featureless
and very large homogeneous nearly flat planar surface.
By "homogeneous", I mean consistent in both visual appearance and
odor potential. At no point did I approach the tree lines or
fence lines closer than a few hundred feet. I avoided giving the
bees any "clues". The stand for the dish was a brand-new
camouflaged folding camp stool, and I sat cross-legged in camouflage
BDUs. Woodland cammo blends in well with a hay field. An acre
is 43,560 square feet, and the dish was 4 inches in diameter, so
the "target" was about 4 square inches in an area of 3,136,320,000
square inches (yes, that is over 3 BILLION square inches).
> With super care, a pure sucrose solution yields zero recruits...
I object to the presentation of the above claim as fact.
It remains to be proven. Evidence at hand contradicts it.
Until it is proven, it will remain an extraordinary claim.
As I have pointed out before, extraordinary claims
require extraordinary evidence.
Claims which are asserted without evidence
can be dismissed without evidence.
> When can we expect bee researchers to heed the evidence...
When the experimental results can be repeated by an impartial
(or even hostile) party.
Perhaps part of the problem here is that the results cited are
"published" only on a website, in a section called "Point Of View",
along with a wide range of opinions from the extreme fringes of
beekeeping, in net effect comprising a "Gilligan's Island of science".
The entire group of "views" can thus be dismissed as "unpublished",
as they have attempted to avoid the peer review process.
> I appreciate the opportunity to respond to Jim Fischer's
> solid adherence to the dance language hypothesis
This is yet another example of how difficult it is to engage
in a calm and dispassionate evaluation of evidence in regard
to foraging mechanisms, and trying to sort out the facts in
support of "dance", "odor", "locality odor", and (my favorite!)
mental telepathy.
I am labeled a "dance language supporter" merely because I point
out the lack of an explanation of the specific mechanics of the
"odor" hypothesis. I have been reduced to a strawman.
I "support" nothing. I am a physicist by trade. We have to
get up early every morning and read the pre-prints that have
arrived via e-mail over night just to figure out what we agree
with TODAY. :)
Adrian's goal appears to be not to persuade but to create an
impression that there are two sides to the question without
actually having to supply one of them. In fact, there are
multiple possible alternative explanations with roughly equal
credibility to "odor". I listed a few above.
jim (April, 1935: The "Comet" makes its debut.
It runs between Boston and Providence at
109 mph. December, 2000: The "Acela" debuts,
making the BOS-WASH run at 150 mph. Outside
the NE corridor, trains can go 80 mph max.
Progress?)
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