>For everyone's information, Wolfgang Kirchner and William Towne
>have an article in the June '94 issue of _Scientific American_
>"The Sensory Basis of the Honeybee's Dance Language" appears
>on pages 74-80. I haven't had a chance to read the article yet, but
>thought that folks might be interested in it.
>
>Rick Hough, Hamilton, MA, USA
>[log in to unmask]
 
 
Thank you, Rick, for bringing this article to the attention of BEE-L
subscribers, permitting me an opportunity to clarify some important points.
 
It is not unusual for people relatively new to science to make somewhat
fantastic claims on the basis of little evidence (especially in magazines
such as SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, which has consistently promoted the notion of
honey bee "language").
 
A note of caution to all interested, however.  Before rushing out and
spending another half a million dollars or so on "robot bee" research,
consider the following:
 
1)  In 1970 Gould, Henerey, and MacLeod published excellent data on the
fact that very few of the recruits that leave the hive after attending REAL
dancers actually succeed in finding the target food source.  Those that do
succeed take an exceptionally long time to do so (and thus obviously do not
fly directly "toward the target" as claimed in the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
article).
 
2)   As Visscher and Seeley in 1982 and I also reported in 1962, the error
in the dance maneuver is exceptionally great, certainly not "exact distance
and direction from the nest" as claimed in the article.
 
3)  As Wells and I documented and published in 1971, if one completely
controls against odor (and odor artifacts), recruits cannot find the target
food source (that is why Kirchner and co-workers had to use odor in their
experiments to obtain recruitment).
 
4)  In 1973 Friesen showed that, if only a few bees travel between hive and
target, recruitment at any appreciable distance downwind from the hive does
not occur.
 
5)  An analysis of the results published by Kirchner and co-workers in 1989
revealed that the results they reported at that time were actually random.
Not even the two real bees in their experiments succeeded in recruiting
other bees to the proper distance, for instance.  (If real bees cannot do
so, how can a "robot bee" succeed?)
 
   All of the above and other points are summarized in the following
publication:  Wenner, A.M., D. Meade, and L. J. Friesen.   1991.
Recruitment, search behavior, and flight ranges of honey bees. AMERICAN
ZOOLOGIST.  31(6):768-782.
 
   A more comprehensive treatment of this problem can be found in:
Wenner, A.M. and P.H. Wells.  1990.  ANATOMY OF A CONTROVERSY: THE QUESTION
OF A "LANGUGE" AMONG BEES.  Columbia University Press.
 
   Ever more bee researchers no longer accept the Kirchner-Towne claim that
"James L. Gould of Princeton University later punctured the odor
hypothesis."  Neither is it obvious that the robot bee experiments "...have
ended several debates surrounding the dance language."
 
* * * * *
 
   For more than two decades we have been treated to one claim or another
that the bee "language" issue has finally been resolved.  Each claim,
however, has stressed the point that previous claims lacked sufficient
foundation.  Will history repeat itself once again?
 
   Perhaps the major problem in this affair is that "language" proponents
embrace results that support their belief system and dismiss results that
do not fit the hypothesis.  In the world of science, however, it is not
always wise to pursue that course.   NATURE has a way of catching up to us.
 
 
   And I have yet to find a beekeeper who has benefited from the dance
"language" hypothesis in its 50 years of existence.  In that connection,
see:  Wenner, A.M. and P.H. Wells.  1987.  The honey bee dance language
controversy:  The ;search for "truth" vs. the search for useful
information.  AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL.  127(20): 130-131.
 
 
 
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