Douglas Farm

Bees Against ElephantsThe bee method could save the elephants By Stefan Anitei, Science Editor

9th of October 2007, 06:52 GMT

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Bees-Against-Elephants-67949.shtml

This is not a cartoon joke: the Goliath of our days can be chased away by the same insects: bees. The giant mammals evacuate the place as soon as they hear the buzz of a bee swarm.

In the end, this could be their salvation. Strategically placed beehives could prevent elephants from raiding crops, decreasing man-beast conflicts when the pachyderms are killed. You can imagine that only one elephant destroys a corn field in just one night, that would provide food for a whole African family.

"If we could use bees to reduce elephant crop-raiding and tree destruction and enhance local income through the sale of honey, this could be a significant step forward towards sustainable human-elephant coexistence," said zoologist Lucy King at the University of Oxford.

There were many previous clues suggesting that elephants avoided bees. In Kenya, acacia trees with empty or occupied beehives are much less damaged than trees lacking hives. In Zimbabwe, a team observed elephants creating new trails to avoid beehives.

The African killer bees (Apis mellifera scutellata) from eastern and south Africa are notoriously aggressive and persistent near their hives and swarms are known to have killed even African buffalo.

To check the elephants' reaction, King's team recorded the buzz of agitated African bees.

"We recorded our bee sounds from a wild hive that we found inside a tree trunk along the Ewaso Ng'iro river in Samburu." said King.

The recording was played back four minutes through wireless speakers located inside fake plastic tree trunks to 17 elephant groups resting under trees in Samburu National Reserve (Kenya) during the midday heat. 16 groups fled within 80 seconds of hearing the buzz. In fact, 8 groups reacted in only 10 seconds. The group that did not react to the buzzing was made of young individuals, which perhaps had not suffered from a previous bee attack.

"When you first mention this idea to people, they usually chuckle at the images it invokes, as it seems so improbable that such a large, powerful creature like an elephant could possible be afraid of tiny bees," King told LiveScience.

But "the sting of an African bee is absolute agony to humans-believe me, I know!-so it's not impossible to imagine that being stung in the sensitive areas around the eyes, behind the ears and even up the trunk would be similarly painful to an elephant." she added.

The most important fact is "that whole herds of elephants moved away together from the sound. If only one or two moved away, the use of bees as a deterrent would only be partially useful." said King.

Using beehives could impede elephants from approaching farms "and therefore contribute to a safer future for both elephants and the people who have to live with them," King said.

Wolfgang H. Kirchner and William F. Towne two honey bee biologist. Have done some amazing work:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/244/4905/686

Hearing in Honey Bees: Detection of Air-Particle Oscillations

WILLIAM F. TOWNE 1 and WOLFGANG H. KIRCHNER 2

Science 12 May 1989:

Vol. 244. no. 4905, pp. 686 - 688

DOI: 10.1126/science.244.4905.686

1 Department of Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, and Department of Biology, Kutztown University, Kutztown, PA 19530.

2 Zoologisches Institut der Universitat Würzburg, Würzburg, FRG.

Although the airborne sounds produced by dancing honey bees seem essential in the bees' dance communication, attempts to show directly that bees can detect airborne sounds have been unsuccessful. It is shown here that bees can in fact detect airborne sounds and that they do so by detecting air-particle movements. Most vertebrates, by contrast, detect pressure oscillations. Because all traveling sound waves have both components, either can be used in sound detection. The bees' acoustic sense appears to be sensitive enough to allow bees to detect the air-particle movements that occur within several millimeters of a sound-emitting dancer.

Submitted on November 29, 1988

Accepted on March 27, 1989

Mechanisms of food provisioning of honeybee larvae by worker bees

Christina Heimken, Pia Aumeier and Wolfgang H. Kirchner*

Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Fakultät für Biologie und Biotechnologie, Bochum, Germany

First published online March 12, 2009

Journal of Experimental Biology 212, 1032-1035 (2009)

Published by The Company of Biologists 2009

http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/content/abstract/212/7/1032

Although it has clearly been demonstrated in previous studies that honeybees inspect their worker brood in a non-random fashion, it is still unclear which signals and cues worker bees use to monitor the nutritional state of their brood. Here we show that worker bees can recognize and quantify the larval food present in a brood cell olfactorily and identify potential mechanical signals produced by the brood. There is no evidence for additional chemical hunger signals produced by the larvae. However, the pattern of movement of larvae within their cells changes with their nutritional state and might provide additional information to nurse bees.

The Sensory Basis

of the Honeybee's Dance Language

By by Wolfgang H. Kirchner and William F. Towne

http://www.beekeeping.com/articles/us/bee_dance_2.htm

For many centuries, naturalists have observed that honeybees tell their nestmates about discoveries they make beyond the hive. Nevertheless, the system of communication that the insects use remained a mystery until the 1940s, when Karl von Frisch of the University of Munich in Germany first discovered the significance of bees' dances. In the hive the steps and waggles of a successful forager correlate closely with the exact distance and direction from the nest to the resource she has discovered. For the next two decades, most scientists believed bees relied primarily on these silent movements to communicate.

In the 1960s this view was challenged in two ways. The first challengers were Adrian M. Wenner, then a graduate student at the University of Michigan, now at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and Harald E. Esch of the University of Munich, now at Notre Dame University. Working independently, the two researchers discovered that the dances were not silent after all. As the bees dance, they emit faint low-frequency sounds, and Wenner and Esch both suggested that the sounds might play a critical role in the bees' communication. The use of sounds, they reasoned, might account for the bees' ability to communicate effectively in the complete darkness that prevails inside their nests. At the time, however, many scientists believed bees were deaf, and so the issue remained open.

FREQUENCY RANGE of the sounds a bee can detect extends well below the range heard by human ears. The graph shows how fast the air particles near a dancer's wings must travel to generate audible signals. Within this range, the bees show an ability to differentiate between sounds having varying frequencies.

THE DANCING ROBOT successfully recruited its nestmates to food away from the hive. The experimenters placed eight baits around the hive and programmed the robot to dance concerning one site. Observers in the field recorded the approach of searching bees. Most of the robot's recruits went to the bait indicated by its dance.

Wenner later raised the second challenge to von Frisch's description of the dance language, rethinking his first hypothesis at the same time. Bees, he argued, use none of the information in the dances or the sounds. Instead he proposed that the insects rely on odors to find the new resource advertised by the dancer.

Now both of these debates have been resolved. Bees, it turns out, can hear, and their ears are well suited for detecting the sounds associated with the dances. Observation of how the insects respond to a robot that dances and sings like a live forager shows that both sound and dance are needed to communicate information about the location of food. Silent dances, the experiment demonstrates, communicate nothing, and sound without dance also fails. Odors too are involved but appear to lack the importance that Wenner ascribes to them. Beyond the resolution of these issues, we have also recently learned much more about the nature of the dance sounds, the bees' sense of hearing and the aspects of the dance that are most essential in the communication.

Read the full article:

http://www.beekeeping.com/articles/us/bee_dance_2.htm

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

-----------------------------

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.

Juan Antonio Perez-Sato1, 2, William O.H. Hughes1, 3, Margaret J. Couvillon1, 4 and Francis L.W. Ratnieks1, 5

1  Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Western Bank, Sheffield, S10 2TN, UK
2  Present address: Colegio de Postgraduados Campus Cordoba, Km 348 Carretera Federal Cordoba-Veracruz, Congregación Manuel Leon Amatlan de los Reyes, Cordoba, Veracruz, C.P. 94946, Mexico
3  Present address: Institute of Integrative and Comparative Biology, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK
4  Present address: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, 85721, USA
5  Present address: Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects, Department of Biological and Environmental Science, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9QG, UK

Received 18 April 2008 ? Revised 16 August 2008 ? Accepted 2 September 2008 - Published online 5 December 2008

Abstract - The mating flight is the riskiest period in the life of a honeybee queen. A major cause of queen mortality in apiaries may be the drifting of queens to foreign colonies. We investigated the effects of distance between hives, entrance orientation and worker activity on queen drifting. Only 4% of queens drifted in our experiments, all during their maiden orientation flight and all to the closest neighbouring hive. Neither drifting nor the length of time it took queens to relocate their hive was significantly affected by either entrance orientation or distance between hive stands (2 m or 5 m). However, queens took significantly longer to identify their hive and were more likely to drift when the number of workers at the entrance was lower than that at the neighbouring hive. Our results show that drifting can be low even when hives are placed in pairs with only 2 m between pairs, and that worker activity has an important role in guiding returning queens on their maiden orientation flight.

 http://www.apidologie.org/articles/apido/pdf/2008/06/m08048.pdf

Saturday, January 12, 2008

Future Directions for Honey Research

By Ronald Fessenden, MD, MPH
Presented at the 1st International Symposium on Honey and Human Health, January 8, 2008, in Sacramento, Calif.

Most Promising Categories of Research:

? Restorative Sleep
? Memory & Off-line Processing
? Insulin Resistance & Blood Sugar Control
? Immune System Enhancement
? Anti-microbial Effects

Types of Research Needed:

? Human Observational Studies (short term)
? Studies investigating mechanisms of action
? Clinical trials
? Population or Epidemiological Studies*
* Expensive, confounding variables, control cohorts, accidental correlations

Examples of Human Studies:

? Sleep lab studies observing REM sleep / measuring cognitive abilities post-honey dosing vs. no pre-bedtime or other food ingestion
? Expansion of oral honey ?tolerance? tests measuring effects on blood glucose, HA1c, triglycerides, HDL cholesterol, and insulin response compared to glucose, HFCS, artificial sweeteners
? Clinical trials in pre-diabetic, diabetic patients
? Mechanisms of immune system enhancement

Example of New Product:

? Honey nebulizer for prevention and inhalation treatment of tuberculosis, Valley Fever, and other antibiotic-resistant pulmonary infections
? As of January 6, 2008, provisional patents were pending in 3 countries for use of honey in a nebulizer apparatus for such use
? Clinical trials to establish efficacy and treatment protocols will be needed

Conclusions:

? The scientific and medical community should be able to deduce longer term consequences of consuming honey pending the need for population or epidemiological studies
? The potential public health benefit on metabolic diseases such as obesity, childhood obesity, insulin resistance, type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and neuro-degenerative diseases could be enormous
? Two years of focused research could have a significant impact on the health of the next generation