Douglas Farm

DC beekeeper Toni visits her friend Charlie (Charles Brandts) at the White House - 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Click here to visit her blog post:

http://citybees.blogspot.com/2009/04/visit-with-first-bees.html

Here is a quote from the blog:

"To my mind, Charlie's queen is a good one for the job. The bees were extremely peaceful and gentle, and her pattern was OK, though not gangbusters. In a situation like this, I am all for the happy medium in terms of brood production! The drone brood was in the right place, she seemed to lay more from right to left than in a spiral starting in the center of the frame."

Not mentioned in the article are the two hive's genetic lines. They are USDA Russian and Minnesota Hygienic (Wild Italian). Both lines recived federal funding from the USDA for mite resistance research. A principal reason for their selection. You will notice on Toni's blog that it would seem the White House hives have already produced 2 swarms. Russian  honeybees are well known for high propensity to swarm.

Recent DNA research findings:

http://biblioteca.universia.net/html_bura/ficha/params/id/627801.html

Within the past 40 years, Africanized honey bees spread from Brazil and now occupy most areas habitable by the species Apis mellifera, from Argentina to the southwestern United States. The primary genetic source for Africanized honey bees is believed to be the sub-Saharan honey bee subspecies A. m. scutellata. Mitochondrial markers common in A. m. scutellata have been used to classify Africanized honey bees in population genetic and physiological studies. Assessment of composite mitochondrial haplotypes from Africanized honey bees, using 4 base recognizing restriction enzymes and COI-COII intergenic spacer length polymorphism, provided evidence for a more diverse mitochondrial heritage. Over 25% of the "African" mtDNA found in Africanized populations in Argentina are derived from non-A. m. scutellata sources.

Check out our Honeybee Breeds Information Page

It would seem to me from this that lab testing can quantify the percentage of africanization in a hive. Now we can go beyond saying that hive is Africanized; now we can say that hive is 25% Africanized. This should help researchers in Mexico who are attempting to use selective breeding to develop a less agressive Africanized (A. m. scutellata) honeybee.

Dr. Karl von Frisch is a well known honey bee scientist. Here is a biography of his works:

Source: http://www.animalbehavioronline.com/frisch.html

Karl von Frisch

Karl von Frisch is best known for two major discoveries about honey bees. First, he demonstrated that honey bees have color vision, and published these findings in 191*. Second, in 193* he showed that honey bees use a dance language to communicate food locations to other bees.

Color vision

His demonstration of color vision is simple and elegant. He trained bees to feed on a dish of sugar water set on a colored card. He then set the colored card in the middle of an array of gray-toned cards, as illustrated below. If the bees see the blue card as a shade of gray, then they will confuse the blue card with at least one of the gray-toned cards; bees arriving to feed will visit more than one card in the array. On the other hand, if they have color vision, then the bees visit only the blue card, as it is visually distinct from the other cards.

Figure 1. Grids for the color vision test. The training color, marked with T, is blue in both cases; all other squares are shades of gray. The left box shows how the grid appears to an animal with color vision. The right box shows how the same grid may appear to an animal without color vision. The training square appears to be the same shade of gray as other squares in the grid. If the test animal cannot see in color, it will confuse the training square with other squares matching its shade of gray.

This clever test for color vision can be applied to any animal which can learn to recognize a feeding station using visual patterns.

The dance language

Von Frisch observed that once one honey bee finds a feeding station, many other soon appear at the same station. This suggests that the first bee recruits other bees to the food. How might honey bees recruit help in collecting food? Von Frisch¹s discovery of the dance language of the honey bee required careful determination of the correlations between movements of bees inside the hive and the locations of feeding stations. He found two types of dance. The round dance (Figure 2A) causes bees to look for food a short distance (up to about 50 meters) from the hive. The waggle dance (Figure 2B) tells bees the direction and distance to fly to find more distant food sources. Scout bees use these dances to recruit assistance in collecting food resources.

Figure 2. A. Diagram of the round dance. This alerts bees to food near the hive but does not convey directional information. B. Diagram of the waggle dance. The tempo of the dance tells recruits how far to fly (the slower the dance, the greater the distance) and the angle of the straight part of the dance tells them the direction to fly. C. Because the inside of the hive is dark and the comb is vertical, bees make a convert the angle of the dance on the vertical comb to the angle formed by the feeding station, the hive, and the sun. A dance straight up the comb, as illustrated in B, tells recruits to fly towards the sun. A straight-down dance tells them to fly directly away from the sun. Dances at angles to the vertical indicate intermediate flight directions. The bees use their circadian clock to correct their dances for the movement of the sun in the sky.

Similar dances are used when bees swarm, to help the swarm find a new home. In this case scouts dance to direct bees in the swarm to hollow trees, caves, or other likely nesting sites. After a number of bees have visited each nesting site, a ³voting² process takes place, until one site (generally the best available location) wins out by having more bees dance for it.

Frisch, Karl von. 1993. The dance language and orientation of bees. Harvard University Press

Frisch, Karl von. 1956. Bees; their vision, chemical senses, and language. Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University Press

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So my main problem with his identification work is he did not isolate out the honey bee's ability to smell. I have seen bees fly into my garage with the door only open 1 foot. They come inside scouting, following their nose (or their equivalent), while I have some exposed honey, beeswax, or even just sugar water.

This flaw in the testing along with research misinterpretation has lead many over they years to believe hive entrances need to be identified with a unique color pattern for bees to recognize their hive. I assert that is false.

Doug Fulbright (www.grit.com/Buzz-at-Windy-Ridge-Apiary/Buzz-About-Beekeeping-Equpiment.aspx) is one of the many who are under this false notion. Doug states, "I am going to paint the area above the entrance with a color. Research has been done at what bees recognize best by Dr. Karl Von Frisch. They also use these colors to recognize their own hive. The colors are: yellow, blue, orange, violet." 1st, Dr. Karl Von Frisch did not research what they recognize 'best'. He tested a color variation and vision. 2nd His research does not indicate they use color to identify their home. 3rd bees have a different visual range than humans. They don't see red like we do.

Florence M Rollwagen PhD. Reviews this here:

en.allexperts.com/q/Biology-664/2008/8/bees-color-vision.htm

Florence sites "Here is an approximation of what bees actually see:
www.monash.edu.au/news/monashmemo/stories/20070523/bee.html"

Let's review the cells of the bee's compound eye:

users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/C/CompoundEye.html

This article states there are about 8 cells in each ommatidium. 4 respond to green-yellow (544 nm) 2 respond to blue (436nm) two respond to ultraviolet light (344nm) no cells are able to see red.

Dr. Adrian Dyer of Monash University has found honeybees can recognize faces. They are able to recognize a face with a 30 or 60 degree rotation. These faces were not in color. www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20092701-18716.html 

This along with the fact that I have my hives squared in tight rows of ten that look like hedges with no color variations indicates to me that bees are more intelligent than many give them credit. If they are able to recognize a face they can probably recognize more. For example it seems to me they can identify their home is the third hive on the left in the second row. However if I remove this hive and put another in its place they will change their home to work the new hive now located where theirs had been. (This is useful if you're taking a hive to a fair and don't want foragers). If I turn the hive around at noon (180deg), they will still try to enter on the side where the entrance was in the morning. Clearly sight isn't everything. Foragers will tend to return to their take off point. Try to move hives after sunset and before sunrise to keep foragers. They will waste a few days doing orientation flights after each move, so don?t move them often.

They do not need you to rainbow color your apiary. Listen to you're bees and they'll tell you what they need.