Pictures of how you paint your mating nucs

[Apiarisnt]

Some help with designs that bees might be able to distinguish:

 

[Poly Hive]

Mine have always been painted in strong designs both mini nucs and Full nuc boxes.

Given that the virgin first of all does orientation flights then it to me is obvious. That backed up by losing a queen I was going to clip and then on returning to the nuc some time later she returned as the last thing she had seen was the white object ie me.

PH

 

[Little John]

Good word belief, means acceptance of something with no evidence for it.
There are perfectly rational explanations based on ideomotor co-ordination. But, I guess, believing in dowsing is more "fun" than accepting a rational explanation.

I wonder how atomic bonding fits into that somewhat narrow viewpoint ?

The evidence is all around us - we can make substances which kill people, or blow their limbs off, make aircraft that fly, invent wonderful new materials such as graphene ... and yet we still don't know what the 'glue' is that holds atoms together to form molecules ...

We tell school-kids (or used to ... don't know about these days) that this is the result of either covalent or ionic bonding, where electrons are either shared, or are donated to form attractions. Good stories.

Undergraduates are told to forget that and concentrate on Quantum Theory instead. Very clever stuff, with electrons occupying shells and moving around absorbing energy in one form and releasing it in another. Another good story ... until along comes methane (and organic molecules don't get much more basic than methane) where it can be seen that it's electrons don't obey the 'laws' of quantum mechanics ... whoops - better invent a better story ...

Then along comes Molecular Orbital Bonding Theory, in which the electrons no longer stay where they are supposed to - in the bonds themselves - but fly around the molecule as a whole instead, rather like some overactive youngster who's high on sugar and orangeade.

The best one I've yet heard is where electrons are now thought to be located in two different places at exactly the same time. Now that stretches my imagination to breaking point. I'm not saying that it's not true - it's just that back down here on Earth I can't get my head around it ...

When theoretical scientists can eventually formulate a really convincing explanation for some of the more basic things in life, only then will I be willing to dismiss the currently suspect ideas of Homeopathy and Dowsing.

Think we understand electricity ? Check out the 'Catt Anomaly' - Catt's observation doesn't fit into everyone-else's understanding, but it's undoubtedly true - so it has been accepted as 'an anomaly' ... mainly to keep Ivor Catt quiet.

There are many other examples of such 'Platypuses' (or Platypi)* if you should ever want to go looking for them. Eventually you'll begin to realise that 'The Common Sense' is just the story which most people have been indoctrinated into believing. Belief is at the heart of everything human, including Mathematics, the Sciences, even Logic itself.
LJ

* the only known mammal that lays eggs.

 

[Beefriendly]

I wonder how atomic bonding fits into that somewhat narrow viewpoint ?

I didn't even know people pretended they could douse for it.....
The difference is that atomic bonding exists and is real and is currently being researched. It's testable but not yet fully understood.
ALL testing on supposed psychmumbojumbos like divining etc has shown that no-one has any of their claimed abilities.
A world of difference being able to research something real and totla nonsense.

Believe what you wish. Maybe Santa Claus will still visit you.

 

[mintmoth]

Good word belief, means acceptance of something with no evidence for it.
There are perfectly rational explanations based on ideomotor co-ordination. But, I guess, believing in dowsing is more "fun" than accepting a rational explanation...

Those who can, do.

Those who can't, well, my sympathy.

 

[Beefriendly]

Those who can't, well, my sympathy.

Are you not queuing up with all the other forum dowsers to claim your million dollars, yet?
Do that and I'll eat a poly hive, bees included.

 

[mintmoth]

Are you not queuing up with all the other forum dowsers to claim your million dollars, yet?
Do that and I'll eat a poly hive, bees included.

Apart from the fact that the offer ended 2015 I believe, I'm certain I couldn't find a three quarter inch trickle of water. Underground springs or drainage pipes generally put out considerably more water than that.

As I say, I do it for fun

 

[Icing Sugar]

Dear all,

Thanks for the replies and the uploaded material. The pictures and scanned information from von Frisch more-or-less capture where I was up to with my thinking when I posted the question.

The paintings by Anton Janscha are lovely but well beyond my skills. There are many images of hives painted like that on the internet, many of them from mainland Europe. Quite often, all of the hives are concentrated together in bee houses. I am sure that these must be lovely to behold by the beekeeper but all of that effort is unlikely to be appreciated by the bees and, with such a high concentration of hives in a small space, I am not sure how well these paintings will help orientation or reduce drifting. I suspect that the bees will have an awareness of the general colour scheme of the paintings but all of the detail will be lost on them.

When I painted some nucs last year, the patterns did not turn out too dissimilar from those uploaded by Beefriendly who, interestingly, does not know whether they help the mated-queen return rate or not. The diversity of colour is negligible between mating nucs and any discrimination is largely based upon pattern differences. When we reflect upon the information uploaded by Apiarisnt then we surely have to ask ourselves whether these patterns have any discriminatory value at all for honey bees.

This year I am trying to come up with patterns rather like those of Keith Pierce who has found that the mating success of his queens has improved since he has used them. Each nuc looks very different and is visually striking, both in terms of the colours used and the patterns employed. The patterns appear to observe the rules (as we understand them) of honey bee vision when they are flying at low speed. I suspect that what they come to recognise is some sort of learnt signature within a “flicker phenomenon” that takes place at individual photoreceptor level at the interfaces between different colours within their visual spectrum although, with such a high refresh rate for each photoreceptor, “flicker” might not be quite the right word. (It is possible to speculate how such a system might also help foraging bees as they approach the flowers they are exploiting in the wild). If Keith’s approach is the correct one then our challenge is to paint numerous hives with patterns that are unique and highly distinctive to bees but which, for practical purposes, probably employ a small number of distinct colours... and for us to use these colours wisely. This probably means using hive-specific combinations of not too many colours on each entrance and making sure that there is considerable interface between those colours (... which, interestingly, takes us full circle back to the paintings of Anton Janscha et al).

Any further photographs of your painted mating nucs would be appreciated, along with your opinion of their impact upon mating success.

 

[Beefriendly]

When I painted some nucs last year, the patterns did not turn out too dissimilar from those uploaded by Beefriendly who, interestingly, does not know whether they help the mated-queen return rate or not.

I wouldn't know as I have never run them unpainted, so have no previous data from using unpainted ones. But I am now getting more mated queens than when I first started, which I put down to gaining experience with apidea's, handling queen cells/Virgin queens etc etc. Now if my increased success had coincided with painting my nucs it might lead me to the wrong conclusion.