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From: kuento@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Bees don't fly to nectar in lakes
Message-ID: <1991May24.213725.31053@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>
Date: 25 May 91 02:37:25 GMT
References: <1991May23.165221.20709@psych.toronto.edu>
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services
Lines: 29

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.
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