Barry Donovan wrote: >Jim [Fischer] says dance information is never accurate enough to point to a >specific tree. Well I don't know whether humans could expect to get >as much accurancy out of a bee dance as a follower bee might, but >many people have claimed that they can obain sufficient infomation >to get pretty close to the >indicated food source. Even if the dance information isn't all that >accurate for a new forager, once within cooee [ ??? ] it will >encounter a plume of the same scent as carried by the dancing bee, >which it need only >follow in the manner indicated by Adrian Wenner to arrive at the flowers. ********* Perhaps few BEE-L subscribers are bothering to follow this thread anymore (though I hope they do) -- a simple exercise could settle the issue in their minds. Barry is now in a country that approaches summertime. He should easily be able to train 5 (five) marked forages to collect mildly scented sugar solution at a feeding station located 500 meters/yards DOWNWIND from a bee colony and allow no unmarked bees to return from that station to their colony. I can predict that he will obtain essentially no new recruits to that station during a three-hour period -- "bee language" or not. See Figure 4 in the following URL: http://www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/abjnov1998b.htm Of course, he would have to work in a setting where wind direction is fairly steady, since light winds tend to be more variable. By contrast, he can repeat that experiment with a station 500 meters/yards located UPWIND from the hive. I can predict that he will get a very different set of results (as revealed in Figure 3 of the above URL). And, Jim can readily duplicate such an experiment next season when forage becomes scarce. Will either Barry or Jim (or any other bee language advocate) conduct such a simple experiment? I can predict that they will not do so. I can also predict that if they do so, they will not share their results with the rest of us. 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 --- ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::