BEACHCOMBER

103 YEARS OLD AND STILL BUZZING WITH IDEAS...

HAPPY leap day! In view of the date, I was intending to write about leaping but then I started reading the new, March 2020 issue of the Animal Behaviour journal where I came across a paper that demanded immediate action. So I am writing about honey bees instead.

Written by a team from the University of Sussex, the paper, entitled, “Gone with the wind: effects of wind on honey bee visit rate and foraging behaviour,” reports experiments performed on bees in a controllable environment that contained nectar-producing artificial flowers.

Different wind speeds were produced by fans and the flowers could also be made to sway to and fro on their own without the assistance of wind. The researchers report that: “Bees visited significantly fewer flowers with increasing wind speed which was caused by a significant increase in hesitancy to take off,” but flower movement without wind had no effect on foraging rate other than making the bees take longer finding the nectar.

Intrigued by these findings, I naturally wanted to hear a bee’s perspective on it all, so I popped out of the back door and hailed a passing honey bee. “I say,” I shouted at it. “Is it true that your foraging behaviour is affected by wind?”

This question apparently caused it some alarm and made it stop in mid-buzz. “Sir,” it replied. “A bee’s flatulence is its own private matter and I do not care to discuss it. Mid-flight flatulence can throw a bee completely off course, and we don’t even like to think about it.”

I apologised profusely for not making my question clearer and assured the insect that I had been referring to the weather type of wind.

“Well that’s an easy question,” he said. “Of course we’re hampered when it’s blowing a gale. During the recent storms Ciara and Dennis, our hive’s air traffic controllers grounded us all.”

“That sounds very sensible,” I said. “But what did you make of artificial flowers swaying when there wasn’t any wind coming from the fans?”

“Well,” he said, “I’ve heard of beekeepers but I never knew we had bee fans too. As for the swaying-flowers, no-fans scenario, all I can say is that the answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.”