Hi Ted!


Love the topic of water.   My beekeeping buddy (a lurker on this list) and I went to Georgia last year and while there, we visited the "Fat Bee Man", aka D<http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A2=BEE-L;60f22ced.1707>on Kuchenmeister (a great German name meaning "cake master").


He showed us how he puts an empty super over most of his hives and how he uses that empty for many things.  One of those things was providing hives with water.  His reasoning:  Why make bees travel so far to get water when it's easy to provide it to them directly and saves them effort?  (Of course you can't put water saucers over hives and then neglect them for weeks on end.)


Regarding the antennae and behavior you observed:  I am going to hazard a guess (my doctoral expertise is sensory systems so basing this guess off my knowledge of the subject).  My guess is that the moving water vibrates, still water does not, and bees are very sensitive to vibrations...so they are monitoring the vibrations as they sip the water.


Christina

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