Hi All,

With all due respect to beekeepers and their problems, my own interest in
the honeybee "dance language" (DL) controversy, is based on the fact that
this specific controversy has long become the most important reflection of a
far more important, basic, general controversy over the very foundations of
the whole field of Behavioral Science. I shall say no more about that
general controversy beyond pointing out that it was no accident that v.
Frisch's 1973 Nobel Prize was shared by the 2 co-founders of a specific
general approach to the study of behavior, known as European Ethology.

The honeybee DL hypothesis has, however, with which that Wenner dealt on
other occasions. When v. Frisch still correctly believed that
honeybee-recruits use odor alone all along, he learned from an experienced
beekeeper of a "technique" for sending honeybees to flowers of a desired
type by offering sugar-water on cut flowers of that type in front of the
hive. V. Frisch experimented with the "technique" and improved it, by
offering the sugar-water on the cut flowers inside the hive (to prevent
robbery), in a wire-mesh cage (to prevent the bees from throwing the flowers
out). He then highly recommended the "technique to beekeepers. At the time,
however, he did not have the great fame he later earned for his "discovery'
of the sensational honeybee DL, and few, except the Soviets, heeded his
advice.

After his great "discovery", he became erroneously convinced that, since
bees that fed on the cut flowers in front of the hive, or inside the hive,
would perform only round dances, their recruits could find such flowers only
near the hive, within the round dance range. This is why his massive
1967(1965) book, which is devoted primarily to the honeybee DL, includes
only one very brief chapter on sending honeybees to flowers of s desired
type by use of odor alone.
--
Sincerely,
Ruth Rosin ("Prickly pear")

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