christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) (05/23/91)
I recall once being told that a study showed that if a bee is led to a sugar source in the middle of a lake (on a boat!) and then returns to the hive to 'report' the location to the others bees, they don't 'believe' the report and do not follow the 'instructions' of the dancing bee. Can anyone give me the exact reference to this (or a similar) study. Thanks! Please e-mail me as I don't read this newsgroup regularly. -- Christopher D. Green Psychology Department e-mail: University of Toronto christo@psych.toronto.edu Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1 cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca -- Christopher D. Green Psychology Department e-mail: University of Toronto christo@psych.toronto.edu Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1 cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca
kuento@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (05/25/91)
In article <1991May23.165221.20709@psych.toronto.edu>, christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes: > > I recall once being told that a study showed that if a bee is led to a sugar > source in the middle of a lake (on a boat!) and then returns to the hive > to 'report' the location to the others bees, they don't 'believe' the > report and do not follow the 'instructions' of the dancing bee. Can anyone > give me the exact reference to this (or a similar) study. Thanks! For those of you who are curious, recent research suggests that surface features of high albedo (white sand, water, a mirror) play havoc with Honeybee visual systems, and the bees are not able to fly and orient properly over such areas (they avoid doing so, if possible). In short, it's not that the bees don't "believe" the report from the forager, but they are essentially unable to follow those instructions properly - if one were to create a visual "bridge" across the water, presumably the bees would be able to forage along the path created. There is at least one bee species, a sweat bee, which only collects pollen from Pickerelweed, and it is the only bee known to regularly forage over water, though generally close to shore (and thus not necessarily over *open* water). The "acid test", incidentally, was when sheets of mylar were laid beneath the normal flight path of a Honeybee colony - and all these bees started milling about in midair, wandering off, or flipping over and crashing. They knew where they had to fly, but were befuddled by the mylar on the ground. -------(please include "DY" in subj header of mail to this user)-------- Doug "Speaker-To-Insects" Yanega "UT!" Bitnet: KUENTO@UKANVAX My card: 0 The Fool (Snow Museum, Univ. of KS, Lawrence, KS 66045) "Ev-ry-bo-dy loves the Michigan RAAAAaaaaag!" - The Singing Frog