"Thinking" bees.

[oliver90owner]

Read up on how natural selection works and the answer will become clear.

farbee,

PM coming shortly.

 

[Chris Luck]

PM coming shortly.

Can I have one, I'm feeling left out.

I'm not at all sure about this south facing preference thing, it isn't what happens in my experience at all, in fact bizarrely I see as many ferals on north faces of buildings / trees as I do on south, east, west or whatever. It would imply that it's the cavity that matters.

It's the same problem with height. Generally I find they are between 2 and 4 metres BUT that's where the cavities are concentrated, I see them at ground level under large old oak trees and way up at the top of a castle tower, (that's north side as well).

Chris

 

[MandF]

Read up on how natural selection works and the answer will become clear.

I understand how natural selection works, are you suggesting they have evolved (or humans have selected bees with) this specific behaviour since being kept in beehives?

 

[MandF]

I'm not at all sure about this south facing preference thing, it isn't what happens in my experience at all, in fact bizarrely I see as many ferals on north faces of buildings / trees as I do on south, east, west or whatever. It would imply that it's the cavity that matters.

Chris

It seems to be that no soon as we have a "golden rule" for beekeeping, we get inundated with exceptions to that rule, which is why I think there are very few golden rules.

We are lucky that bees are very resilient and will put up with all sorts of manipulations and mistakes from us humans. Beekeeping is more art than science, more choice than prescription, more opinion than right or wrong.

It is why I love it so much, there is so much we do not know about what makes them tick.

 

[oliver90owner]

Can I have one, I'm feeling left out.

Hi Chris,

PM coming shortly to let you in on the 'secret'!

Regards, RAB

 

[MandF]

What I want to know is why they do the "washboarding" exercise? I have observed one of my colonies doing that 3 or 4 times now.

I think this is still a mystery! All we can do is guess what they are up to. I havent seen mine do it, but youtube vids are weird, they look like chinese internment camps doing those pop routines. But not in orange.

 

[MandF]

Can I have one, I'm feeling left out.

Hi Chris,

PM coming shortly to let you in on the 'secret'!

Regards, RAB

Have I just regressed into infant school?!

Let me guess, I am not interested in this discussion at all, it is just me making trouble? Am I right?

Admin, could you please explain how a discussion board is going to work if one person is whispering to participants and telling them not to bother replying?

 

[scuttlefish]

Admin, could you please explain how a discussion board is going to work if one person is whispering to participants and telling them not to bother replying?

Oooh, paranoid!

Please play nicely you two.

Happy flow,

 

[MandF]

Paranoid? moi?

I guess the secret isnt a secret then - care to share?

 

[scuttlefish]

It seems to be that no soon as we have a "golden rule" for beekeeping, we get inundated with exceptions to that rule, which is why I think there are very few golden rules.

We are lucky that bees are very resilient and will put up with all sorts of manipulations and mistakes from us humans. Beekeeping is more art than science, more choice than prescription, more opinion than right or wrong.

It is why I love it so much, there is so much we do not know about what makes them tick.

If only because the "golden rules" in general are based on science looking at particular strains of bees in particular circumstances, which are then (the "art") applied to all bees in all circumstances ("Hey! Those warm-weather adapted bees you shipped me yesterday from Crete to Scotland aren't behaving the same way they did when I saw them in your Apiary - what's going on?!")...

P.s. your bees tick? Wierd - Apis mellifera chronoligica? Mine usually buzz...

 

[gavin]

For those of you who consider bees to be automatons following simple rules, try this for a sign that there is more going on inside their minds than we usually give them credit for.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/The-Secret-Life-of-Bees.html

James Nieh's group published something similar recently for foraging rather than house-hunting.

So, in the foraging case, a bee having a bad experience at a feed site returns home and looks for waggle dances. When it sees one pointing at the risky site, it stops the waggle dancer by head-butting and peeping. Same for house-hunting. Bees that have reached a consensus (ie enough scouts have agreed on a new site) go back to the swarm and head-butt those giving the wrong message to silence dissent.

So bees remember a site and remember what they know about the site. They interpret dances, decide that some dances are inappropriate, and decide to stop those dances. I was gobsmacked when I first read about that. It changes how you think about bees.

G.

PS No PM expected or wanted RAB.

 

[MandF]

Wow, will give that a read.. thanks!

 

[MandF]

P.s. your bees tick? Wierd - Apis mellifera chronoligica? Mine usually buzz...

Oops, I might be keeping bombus, would explain the lack of stores this year...

 

[scuttlefish]

Paranoid? moi?

I guess the secret isnt a secret then - care to share?

Sure - not breaking any confidences - it was a point which has been debated openly in detail on the forum about top ventilation which might have derailed this discussion if made in this (quite interesting) thread. Nothing personal, everybody happy - now, back to the cognitive capacities of our favourite hymenoptera?

 

[Ely]

Richard Dawkins has some good books if anyone is confused to how bees or any other living organism got to where it is, and how they function. I liked 'unweaving the rainbow'. There is a very good chapter on evolution and genes.

 

[gavin]

You can read about the work on foraging bees by James Nieh's group here:

http://phys.org/news185115064.html

The link includes this video of head-butting in action. Of course, it has been on the Scottish forum for ages but I thought it was time to put it here too!

[VID] [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP8eCG_8f3Q[/ame] [/VID]

 

[MandF]

Cool, so we should desist from the top ventilation issue, and instead stick to another, like a swarm choosing a new hive.

As it happens, I was not referring to those previous threads, but another comment from, I think, Chris which I read this morning which was saying the same kind of thing. It seems to be a fairly common occurrence - "if left alone bees will do x, therefore it must be the thing they want" or words to that effect. Sorry Chris if it wasnt you!

I just wanted to discuss this whole idea of bees 'thinking' and also them necessarily doing what is best for them, or even what they "want". I dont see why bees attack us beekeepers, we want the the colony to survive

 

[Ely]

It seems to be that no soon as we have a "golden rule" for beekeeping, we get inundated with exceptions to that rule, which is why I think there are very few golden rules.

We are lucky that bees are very resilient and will put up with all sorts of manipulations and mistakes from us humans. Beekeeping is more art than science, more choice than prescription, more opinion than right or wrong.

It is why I love it so much, there is so much we do not know about what makes them tick.

It seems to me that bees have been around as they have due to being extremely versatile and resilient. If there was many golden rules that would suggest that bees were not versatile

 

[MandF]

For those of you who consider bees to be automatons following simple rules, try this for a sign that there is more going on inside their minds than we usually give them credit for.

Ok, I just read that article, and it is indeed very interesting.

You have to forgive me, as I work with computers and started out as a programmer, I tend to try and see if there is any basic programming which could explain behaviours... so in this instance we have a bee which has come back from scouting a site, and sees another bee advertising a different site.

On the surface we see that be watching the other one, seeing that it is advertising an inferior site and wants to stop her advertising it.. "mine is better!!".

Programmatically one could say "i rated my site as an 8, she is advertising a 5 rated site, 8>5 so I will stop her wasting her time". Or more simply, she isnt dancing as excitedly as I have/will, so I will stop her.

How they store or remember excitedness is still interesting.

 

[MandF]

It seems to me that bees have been around as they have due to being extremely versatile and resilient. If there was many golden rules that would suggest that bees were not versatile

I agree