Bamboozling Bees

A bee knows the signs. When a foraging worker returns to the hive laden with pollen or nectar, she executes a stylized dance proclaiming her success. Fellow workers, by smelling the dancing bee, can tell at once what kind of flower she has been playing around with. Off they zoom hopefully, searching for like-smelling flowers.

In the current Entomological News, Dr. Rudolf G. Schmieder of the University of Pennsylvania told how science has learned these signs and put them to use. First to interpret the bee law of dance and scent was Professor Karl von Frisch of the University of Munich. Near a hive he placed a square of cardboard perfumed with bergamot oil, and on it a dish full of sugar syrup. Fifty yards away he arranged a row of cards. None offered syrup, but each had a different scent. One was oil of bergamot.

The professor fed twelve bees on the bergamot-scented syrup. They returned to the hive and danced their dance. Within an hour, 216 bees paid calls on the sugarless, bergamot-scented card.

By similar trickery, beemen can lure their bees to almost any flower. Red clover, for instance, is not particularly attractive. But if a few bees are fed syrup from a small dish resting on a pile of red clover blossoms, their dances and scent incite other bees to pollenate red clover, increasing its crop of seed.

Occasionally bees are obstinate. Then the keeper selects a hive containing many adolescent, more adaptable bees. At that age, they can always be had.

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