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Bees
This nOde last updated February 25th,
2024 and is permanently morphing...
(first emerged April 8th, 2008)
bee (b) noun
1. a. Any of several
winged, hairy-bodied, usually stinging insects of the
superfamily Apoidea in the order Hymenoptera, including both
solitary and social species and characterized by sucking and
chewing mouthparts for gathering nectar and pollen. b. A
bumblebee. c. A honeybee.
2. A social gathering
where people combine work, competition, and amusement: a
quilting bee.
- idiom.
a bee in (one's) bonnet
An impulsive, often
eccentric turn of mind; a notion.
[Middle English, from
Old English bo. Sense 2 perhaps also alteration of dialectal
bean, voluntary help given to a farmer by his neighbors, from
Middle English bene, extra service by a tenant to his lord,
from Old English bn, prayer.]
bee
bee (b), flying INSECT of the superfamily Apoidae, having enlarged hind feet for pollen gathering and a dense coat of feathery hairs on the head and thorax. Bees feed on POLLEN and nectar; the latter is converted to HONEY in the digestive tract. Most have stings connected to a poison gland. Bees may be social, solitary, or parasitic in the nests of other bees. Social bees include bumblebees, stingless bees, and honeybees. A typical colony of social bees has an egg-laying queen, sexually undeveloped females (workers), and fertile males (drones). Workers gather nectar, make and store honey, and protect the hive. They care for the queen and larvae and perform complex patterned dances to communicate the location of pollen sources to one another. After being fertilized by a drone, the queen spends her life (usually several years) laying eggs. Honeybees are raised commercially for honey and for the WAX they produce for their nests (combs) and as agricultural cross-pollinators. So-called "killer bees" are essentially African honeybees that are much more aggressive than common honeybees when disturbed. They were introduced into the New World in Brazil during the mid-1950s and have since spread north to the U.S.
A well-perfected system
of communication exists among the honeybees. In studies of
bees begun in the early 1900s, the Austrian zoologist Karl von Frisch determined many of the
details of their means of communication. In a paper
published in 1923, von Frisch described how after a field bee
discovers a new source of food, such as a field in bloom, she
fills her honey sac with nectar, returns to the hive, and
performs a vigorous but highly standardized
dance.
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During this ceremony the other workers scent the fragrance of the flowers from which the dancer collected the nectar. Having learned that food is not far from the hive, and what it smells like, the other bees leave the hive and fly in widening circles until they find the source.
Numerous bees in the hive closely follow the dancer, imitating her movements.
Honey is mentioned in the Talmud and the
Bible, as well as in the records of ancient China, Greece, and
Rome. Bee carvings have been found on the temple walls of
ancient Egyptians.
Indeed, references to honey and its healing powers are found in
ancient papyri dating back to 5000 BC. Bee pollen then and now
is described by some as "a life-giving dust".
Although the bee has not been deified by the ancient Egyptians, it was worshipped as a source of eternal life. The tomb of the ancient Egyptian king Ramses III (1198-1167 BC) has bee designs in it. In most Egyptian funeral vaults, bees are shown in all phases of honey gathering.
Hindu writings dating
back from around 1500 BC also contain references to pollen and
honey, as Hindus believed that eating these substances would
enable them to maintain good health in both body and mind. In
fact, Krishna, the Hindu deity, has been depicted as a
bee..... Ancient Roman records also talk about the benefit of
honey. Welsh and Celtic
folklore has abundant references to the sweet substance. At
one point in their history, the Welsh paid their taxes in
measures of honey.
Hippocrates, considered the father of medicine, wrote, "Honey and pollen cause warmth, clean sores and ulcers, soften hard ulcers of lips, heal carbuncles and running sores."
"...the Great Mother
was known as the Queen Bee and her priestesses were Melissae,
the Bees. Pindar says that the Pythian priestess at Delphi was known as
the Delphic Bee, and her emblematic bee appeared on Delphic
coins. The officiates at
Eleusis were Bees.
The name Melissa is an ancient
title referring to a priestess of the Great Mother or to a
nymph (the full-grown larva of bees are called nymphs)...
The Cretan Zeus was born in a cave of bees and was fed by them, and Zeus also had the title of Melissaios, Bee-man; he fathered a son, the hero Meliteus, by a nymph who hid the child from Hera in a wood, where Zeus had him fed by bees. Dionyous was fed on honey as a babe by the nymph Makris, daughter of Aristaeus, protector of flocks and bees.
As emblems of the
goddesses Demeter, Cybele, Diana, Rhea and the Ephesian
Artemis, bees are lunar and virgin. The bee appears on statues
of Artemis and some of her priests were called Essenes - King Bees
- Pausanias says that the word 'Essene' means King Bee. With
the Essenes, 'King Bees' were priestly officials.
Christ was called the 'aetherial bee'.(by the
Church)
- _Dictionary of Symbolic & Mythological Animals_, Cooper
Sent from: Tiffany Lee
Brown <magdalen@well.com>
[ mod's note: amazingly
reminiscent of the movie by David Blair?]
The short
version: Researchers at the far extremes of where
advanced mathematics intersects quantum
mechanics found they've been impossibly trumped by
dancing honeybees.
[From www.npr.org
:]
[8.] [QUANTUM
BEES] -- Robert talks to mathematician Barbara Shipman about her
cross-disciplinary discovery. In mapping a six-dimensional
figure onto two-dimensions, she recognized the pattern
as that of the honeybee's ritual dance. To her, this
implies that bees can sense the quantum world, since it
is in that realm that six-dimensional geometry has real
meaning. The bees use the dance to communicate to others in
the hive the location and distance of a pollen source:
the dance that honey bees do to tell their
hivemates where they have found a good food source. The bees
change the form of the dance acording to the location of the
flowers that constitute the source. The surprising thing is that
there may be a deep mathematical reason for how the dance
changes form. The reason is related to a space in symplectic
geometry known as a "flag manifold." Although no one is
suggesting that honey bees understand flag manifolds, it is
possible that the instincts which control their behavior
are
wired in such a way that
the principles of this kind of geometry apply.
Dancing for Your
Dinner: How honeybees communicate nectar sites to their
fellows Who dances? Who watches?
Scout bees (workers)
find food sources.
Role of worker bee changes over its 6 month lifetime.
Elements of the dance
Direction of center line in figure-8 dance in relation to the vertical
corresponds to direction of food
source in relation to the
sun.
(3
light sentitve spots on
head) vibrating of abdomen (wings?) during walk through
center line corresponds to flying time. Scout bee
offers others regurgitated nectar, identifying nature of the
food source.
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How it was researched
Numbering of bees in
hive.
Observing which bees
find provided food source.
Observing which bees
dance/which bees watch.
Observing which bees
subsequently fly to the. provided food source.
Other Points
Dance-like activity
one might see in a hive that is not this dance
Some scientists say
this research was faulty: Maybe we don't really understand the
dance.
We all know that the waggle dance is the
name given to one of the most important parts of the honey bee
dance language
(taken from von Frisch's term 'tail-wagging dance'), but did you
know it's also the name of a beer made with honey in addition to
barley malt? (I assume the name comes from the honey
connection, and not only from the behavior of heavy consumers).
This honey bee uses 500 kg of honey in every 100-barrel batch, so it's definitely not a token effort. The resulting brew is (I'm told) golden in color, with a notably firm and smooth body, a touch of sweetness with suggestions of orange and lemon, and a flowery dryness in its long finish. It has 5 percent alcohol and is a cask-conditioned draught.
Waggle Dance is
available in around 200 pubs, mainly those owned by the
brewers Vaux in the north of England, at around 1.45-1.65
pounds per pint (an ancient British measurement, still used by
drinkers, of just
over 0.5 litre).
Date:Tue, 9 Jul 1996 15:18:08 -0800
Reply-To: Discussion
of Bee Biology <BEE-L@CNSIBM.ALBANY.EDU>
Sender:
Discussion of Bee Biology <BEE-L@CNSIBM.ALBANY.EDU>
From: Adrian Wenner
<wenner@lifesci.ucsb.edu>
Subject: Bee dance reply - I
We have once again had a flurry of exchange
on the honey bee language
controversy --- the fourth time in a little more than a year
on various
networks
(this
time primarily
on the SOCINSCT network). Not much new seems to have
emerged, particularly since bee language proponents have yet to
address fully the list of 16 problems with the dance language
hypothesis that I posted on the Internet last January.
Some points, though, beg for further comment. However, Bruno Latour's 1987 comment (as quoted in the book, ANATOMY OF A CONTROVERSY...) applies here: "We have to understand first how many elements can be brought to bear on a controversy; once this is understood, the other problems will be easier to solve."
Rather than attempt to reply to the several
points raised in one lengthy message, I will post sequentially a
few relatively short comments about each point raised in the
last few weeks.
******** FIRST COMMENT (Just what is the bee language hypothesis?):
We once had a concise statement of the language hypothesis, but too much evidence is now at variance with that original hypothesis (as outlined in the 16 points posted in January). Some individuals still have a deep attachment to the idea of a "language" use by honey bees but seem to no longer embrace any concise scientific statement of that hypothesis. Under the circumstances, Julian O'Dea's alternative ("idiothetic/mnemonic") hypothesis seems as likely as the dance language hypothesis as an explanation for the teleological question, "Why do bees dance?" (He asked: "But why has so little attention been paid to the possibility that the bees do the dances [in order to memorize] the location of resources?")
Deep conviction to a hypothesis may reflect
an unconscious commitment to a status quo attitude of the
scientific community; however, as one scientist wrote
(paraphrased): The strength of a conviction has no bearing
on whether a scientific hypothesis is true or not.
(In that connection, witness what happened with the "cold fusion" episode).
Enlightment on that point may be found in
one section of an excellent book, as follows: Fleck,
Ludwik. 1935. Pp. 20-51 in GENESIS AND DEVELOPMENT
OF A SCIENTIFIC FACT. Univ. of Chicago Press.
(translated
into English and republished in 1979.
[To order (only about US$12):
1-(800) 621-2736 --- ISBN:
0-226-25325-2]
Look for the SECOND COMMENT that follows shortly (why "compromise" has little place in science).
Adrian
Adrian M. Wenner (805)893-2838 (UCSB office)
Ecol., Evol., & Marine
Biology
(805) 893-8062 (UCSB FAX)
Univ. of Calif., Santa
Barbara
(805) 963-8508 (home office & FAX)
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
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Date: Tue, 9 Jul 1996
19:52:27 -0800
Reply-To: Discussion of
Bee Biology BEE-L@CNSIBM.ALBANY.EDU
Sender: Discussion of
Bee Biology BEE-L@CNSIBM.ALBANY.EDU
From: Adrian Wenner
wenner@lifesci.ucsb.edu
Subject: Bee dance
reply - II
On the question of bee "language":
******** SECOND COMMENT ("Compromise" does not lead to progress in science)
In this recent
interchange we were once again asked to believe: "1)
sometimes the bees do dances, and their nestmates use
the information
in these dances to influence where they themselves seek
forage, and 2) [at] other times the bees still do the dances
but their nestmates make little or no use of the dance
information [as to] where they end up
foraging." That position seems to serve as a
"security blanket" of sorts. If I do an experiment with
only single controls (as von Frisch, Gould, and other language
proponents have done) I can get results supportive of the
language hypothesis --- that is, condition #1 (above)
prevails. However, if I do strong inference or double
controlled experiments (as Wenner and co-workers did) and
obtain evidence not in agreement with the language hypothesis
(whatever that might be now), then condition #2 (above)
prevails. We thus have a peculiar circumstance --- any
set of results is acceptable, and we need not concern
ourselves with hypothesis testing.
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However, where would
we be today if geneticists in the 1940s and 1950s had
compromised, as follows: "sometimes DNA carries the genetic
information and sometimes protein carries that
information." (Would we
have "genetic
engineering" today?) Or, what if Pasteur and fellow
scientists had compromised: "sometimes life arises by
spontaneous generation and sometimes life can only come from
life." (Would we have pasteurized milk today?)
I suggest that bee
language proponents now get together and agree upon a concise
scientific statement of the hypothesis they believe in, one
that can be tested experimentally. (Language proponents
now seem to agree that
the conclusions of von
Frisch were not justified on the basis of the evidence he had
gathered.)
On this point I am reminded of a recent statement by Harold B. Hopfenberg (1996. "Why wars are lost." AMERICAN SCIENTIST. 84:102-104):
"The biased hypothesis...provides valuable scaffolding for sincere inquiry as long as the methodology and subsequent interpretation of data do not result in the confusion of hypothesis with conclusion."
Look for the THIRD
COMMENT that follows shortly (Why scientists necessarily
rely more on experimental results than on "consensus").
Adrian
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The 7" is limited to 1300 copies on "honey" yellow vinyl and 50
copies on green vinyl
signed by John, Peter, Drew and Bill Breeze.
The CDEP was deleted on Autumnal Equinox when the third part of
the series was released.
Vinyl etching:
Side A - HONEY FROM THE HORNET'S NEST
Side B - FOR HARRY CROSBY AND HARRY SMITH
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float like a ![]() empty mind formless shapeless like ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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