'the bee-stly bee-attitudes of balthazar bee' - jp donleavy

isa and I recently attended the first day of a two-day introductory course at Keele University on beekeeping. The weather was cold and damp, unfortunately, so we weren't allowed to go to the apiary and see the bees who would have been tetchy, but the subject is fascinating and bizarre. There was so much to take in that my head was spinning by the end of the day.

I'd heard about the waggledance, where bees tell each other about the type, quantity, direction and distance of food sources, but what I didn't know was that the bees not only take account of the sun's apparent movement, but they can work out the direct line between food sources and the hive even if large buildings are in the way.

One of the tutors referred to experiments to determine what exactly the bees measure. Is it duration of flight, the effort required to get there or possibly the number of objects passed on the way? I'd like to know more about how these hypotheses could be tested.

I also had no idea about the subtleties of bee reproduction. Queens mate only once, and can then choose to lay either fertilised eggs, which become workers (female), or unfertilised eggs, which become drones (male). The workers choose which female eggs become queens. They can also lay eggs themselves (which would become drones because they are unfertilised), but they don't because the queen's pheromones prevent them.

The final session is on 27th May, and I'm looking forward to it.

Tags: bees | beekeeping | waggledance | reproduction