Since 20 September, when I left for a two-week period of intensive
bee research in Maryland, several contributors to BEE-L again raised
the issue of bee "language" -- to which I could not respond.

    Rick Drutchas asked about the "robot bee" experiments.  Ahlert
Schmidt provided a list of recent papers on the topic.

    Those interested should realize that several issues intersect on
this matter.  First, during the last couple of decades almost all
research has focused on the dance maneuver itself, not on whether
naive bees could USE the information in that maneuver, as covered in:
http://www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/jib2002.htm

    The "robot bee" experiments seemed to be an exception, but those
researchers began with the assumption of "truth" of bee "language."

    Whenever controversy erupts, attention to evidence goes out the
window.  "The proof is in the pudding," however, as the saying goes.

    Consider the following facts (available at:

http://www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/az1991.htm


1)  Esch and Bastian reported (1970):

        70  marked bees attended dances, but only
        14  of them found the new location
        10  of those 14 bees required between 1 and 9 flights before success

    The "most successful" 4 bees searched for 56, 58, 90, and 360
seconds for the 30 second flight between hive and feeding station.

        20  others failed to find the station

2)  Gould, Henerey, and McCloud reported (1970):

        277 marked bees left the hive after attending dances
         37 arrived at the two stations
         25 of them ended up in the "right" direction
         12 of them arrived at a station in exactly the opposite direction

         20 seconds was the flight time out for experienced foragers
          8 MINUTES, median time, was required for recruits to find the feeder
         75 MINUTES was the longest search time for a successful recruit

3)  Friesen reported (1973):

         24 minutes was the maximum search time for a downwind station
          9 minutes was the maximum search time for an upwind station

4)  Dreller and Kirchner (1993), principals in "robot bee" research, reported:

        262 marked recruits required an average of about two HOURS to
reach a feeding station that regular foragers would fly to in just
over a MINUTE

    Please note that most of that evidence counter to the language
hypothesis was gathered by bee language proponents.

    Does the above adverse evidence matter to bee language advocates?
So far it hasn't.  Those who have read our 1990 ANATOMY OF A
CONTROVERSY book know why.

                                                Adrian



--
Adrian M. Wenner                (805) 963-8508 (home office phone)
967 Garcia Road                 [log in to unmask]
Santa Barbara, CA  93103        www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/index.htm

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*
*    "We not only believe what we see:
*  to some extent we see what we believe."
*
*                           Richard Gregory (1970)
*
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