Ron Brown (in 'Seasonal Guide to Beekeeping') speculated that scouts could get caught up in bee flyways between apiary and crops.Originally Posted by busybeephilip
Ron Brown (in 'Seasonal Guide to Beekeeping') speculated that scouts could get caught up in bee flyways between apiary and crops.
And Seeley demonstrates really well that the swarm moving from the temporary resting place to the chosen new site follows the scouts that overfly the swarm using fast and direct flight. In studies that resemble those that prakel is referring to the swarm would get 'lost' en route to the new site if the flight line crossed bee flyways between apiaries and OSR fields (i.e. a busy route with lots of direct flights … so resembling the scouts). I always thought this was a neat experiment. What I'm not sure is whether Seeley ever demonstrated it was the swarm that got distracted and lost, or the scout bees leading the swarm …
Mid-afternoon and (yet again) too cold for inspections … when it warms up it's going to be swarmtastic … I'm putting my bait hives out
5C and raining here.
Some of Seeley's experiments are pure genius and he has very good video clips to illustrate the navigation dancing.
He had one of his assistants paint over the Nasonov gland in every bee in a swarm to illustrate that the fanning influences the speed at which the swarm enters the chosen nest site.
Seeley could be wrong, in an ideal world this probably happens. How do you explain bee nests which are created out in the open with no protection or cavity amongst tree / bush branches and not in the vicinity of any other colonies. Bees will go where the queen goes and if she decides to take a rest then the bees will follow.
I know what I observed, bees crossing the area of my apairy and settling. my garden is over 1/2 acre it cam in from the far end towards the apairy site
this supports fatsharks comments and prakel what I've just read
Last edited by busybeephilip; 03-05-2015 at 09:54 AM.
Its stopped raining !
Just this, I think. Bees can't live by absolutes, 'things' happen which don't fit textbook rules. I'd be very surprised to hear that Seeley doesn't accept that there are variables to swarm behaviour.
I like Seeley's work very much, but one has to remember it is done with strains of bee unfamiliar to many of us. What rings true for me are many of Willie Robson's observations about swarming, made with generations of experience observing local bees. He writes that colonies have a memory of all the other colonies within their sphere and investigate these sites first thing in the spring with a view to planning where to swarm into to repopulate, iirc with a particular emphasis on the relationship between mother and daughter parts of a swarm from previous years keeping tabs on each other. the implications about colony memory are almost spiritual!
mbc, that book's a wealth of observations and experience which are hard to dismiss even though they're not always a perfect match with what others have written previously.
I think it comes across very plausibly when he's talking, perhaps less so in writing.
My point about strains of bee was that the bulk of what is writen and the research is done on bees which are unfamiliar to me and which have been transplanted into different areas, it must colour the conclusions somewhat.
Same here, nearly … hoping to do my second proper inspection of the season today. It's been too cold for ages. The OSR has been going full strength for a fortnight and they've missed most of it. Other beekeepers (without day jobs, for example) tell me that swarm preparations are underway in many colonies, so as soon as the temperature rises they'll be off.
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