The number of bees visiting a source will depend on the competing sources.
This in turn will depend on the time of day and the time of year and
the location. The concentration of the sugars of each source will affect
attractiveness as will any scent associated with the bait.
In the summer during a honey flow, any amount of honey or syrup may be
exposed for days in a beeyard without even attracting a single bee visit -
the flowers are that much more attractive!
In fact during the summer we remove thousands of supers of honey, simply
by stacking them, bees and all on pallets on the yard until we return to
pick them up - sometimes several days later. The honey does not interest
them even slightly until the flow wanes. Then watch out, because they
will empty full supers in a hour or two.
As a point of interest: The bees ALL leave quickly from the full supers
during a heavy flow - they apparently have not read the books which say that
young bees stay in the hive and do not fly for some time after emerging.
Our experience indicates that during a heavy flow virtually every bee
in every foraging hive has flown enough to orient and will return promptly
to its own hive within hours.
I don't believe that the distance is a critical factor in training bees
to visit a dish, bees will visit sources at considerable distances, say a
mile or so away if the hive is powerful enough and there are no competing
sources that are equally or more attractive - considering distance,
scent, colour, concentration, height, previous experience of hive,
preferred direction of flight, prevailing winds, time of day, etc. etc. etc.
Hope this is of some slight use to you - good luck with your experiments
- hope to hear the results.
W. Allen Dick, Beekeeper
Rural Route One
Swalwell Alberta Canada T0M 1Y0
Phone/Fax: 403 546 2588
Email: [log in to unmask]
~
On Fri, 16 Sep 1994, nokrian rivka wrote:
> Hello bee-people,
> I'm doing a research on melon pollination in
> greenhouses. Melon plants have both male and hermaphrodite flowers,
> numbers of which are changing with plant age and climatic factors.
> It seems that honeybees, which are brought in for pollination, do not
> discriminate between the two, but also seem to pay more visits to the
> male flowers. Male flowers are a bit smaller, nectar has a higher
> concentration in the male flowers (25% and more in winter), although
> in hermaphrodite flowers at times I can collect a larger volume
> (3-5 microliters).
> I wanted to carry out some experiment on honeybees ability to
> distinguish between male and hermaphrodite flowers. My idea is to put
> petry dished with honey/sugar solutions to draw the bees and later to
> use plates of different size and with different concentrations of
> solutions to see which of them the bees prefer. My hives are placed next
> to our local botanical garden, which is very small and has a few
> buildings (like a tropical greenhouse and the like) in it.
> I know the papers and books by Von Frisch and other, but I'm not
> sure about some aspects of such an experiment. Can anyone help please?
>
> 1) What is the best distance from the hive to begin the experiment from
> (I read somewhere that about 200m is the distance used)?
> 2) What is a good concentration to use for the solutions (I once used
> 40-45% but not many bees came to eat, perhaps because of the distance)?
> 3) How long do I keep the plates open, or how often do I have to change
> the plates and renew the contents? Not the experiment itself, just the
> beginning phase where I want to bring the bees to the experiment cite?
>
> Any information and ideas will be welcomed. Please forward any replies to:
>
> Rivka Nokrian, E-mail: [log in to unmask]
>
> Thanks, Rivka
>
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