I appreciate the opportunity to respond to Jim Fischer's solid adherence to the dance language hypothesis. It provides an opportunity to present information to others about this sort of research. Jim wrote that searching bees in his example could find UNSCENTED sugar solution, as in his statement: >Just to make life harder for the girls, I used 100% UNSCENTED sugar >solution in sterile dishes, and trained across the entire length >of my 500 acre field. Conditions included "no wind", "upwind", >and "downwind". Lots of recruits, no scent, no distractions (500 acres >of freshly-cut hay stubble). There are several problems with the above situation, problems that are covered quite fully in Chapter 8 of our 1990 book, ANATOMY OF A CONTROVERSY. 1) Bees can become conditioned to any odor, even extremely faint ones (in a few parts per billion or less). That fact has bedeviled many a researcher, since bees can associate something so subtle as deodorant, shampoo, or cut grass with a food reward. 2) 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. Figure 8.1 on p. 134 of our 1990 book illustrates how that circumstance can influence results. 3) Really pure sucrose solution has a vapor pressure of zero (Merck Index listing). That means that no sugar molecules pass into the air above the solution. That also means that honey bees cannot smell well-prepared sugar solution. 4) One may think he/she has an odor-free sugar solution, but care in preparation is all important. Most small lots of sugar now come in paper bags. Unless one takes proper precautions, any sugar solution prepared from that source has a slight paper odor (we labelled that problem "paper factor" on p. 133 of our book). 5) With super care, a pure sucrose solution yields zero recruits -- covered on p. 134 of our book in the following passage: "On 25 July 1968...in the absence of a major nectar source for the colony, we received only five recruits from a hive of approximately 60,000 bees after ten bees had foraged at each of four stations for a total of 1374 round trips during a 3-hour period." Of course, we set out clean dishes and fresh solution each 15 minutes to make sure that the odor of visiting bees didn't accumulate. Consider a more recent example. Early last month a group of us had thousands of foragers from 14 colonies collecting unscented sucrose from a group of double-compartment dishes. One compartment had the unscented sucrose solution. The adjacent compartment in each case had an extremely faint odor that could cling to the foraging bees as they drank. Searching recruits readily found those dishes, but only because of the odor packet in the second compartment. A skeptical observer insisted that bees could find the unscented sucrose solution because of its "odor." To demonstrate that such was not the case, I set out a bowl of unscented solution that I had personally prepared and located a short way from any of the double-compartment dishes. During a two-day period, no bees landed and drank from that single dish, even though thousands of bees located and drank unscented sucrose from the double compartment dishes that had an associated odor in the second compartment. No, I do not see how honey bees could find REALLY PURE unscented sucrose solution. That feature makes them the ultimate generalist forager and means that we could increase pollination efficiency by pumping scented sucrose (scent of the crop we wanted bees to visit) into colonies -- if only bee researchers could "get off the dime" and investigate the best means to do so. In fact, that is exactly what Russian workers and von Frisch accomplished in the late 1930s and early 1940s. See the following for a summary of some of von Frisch's results on that score: http://www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/frisch1943.htm When can we expect bee researchers to heed the evidence and begin to investigate the importance of wind and odors in honey bee foraging patterns? I hope soon -- for the good of the beekeeping community. 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 ***************************************************** * "We not only believe what we see: * to some extent we see what we believe." * * Richard Gregory (1970) ***************************************************** :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: -- Visit www.honeybeeworld.com/BEE-L for rules, FAQ and other info --- ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::