I am very excited by this finding. It is that rare thing, a true paradigm
shift.
Imagine: it means that our bees are thriving and varroa resistant, not
because we are good beekeepers or we have special bees. The major factor
may be because we just happen to have well insulated hives with a void at
the bottom where the bees can do their own thing.
I wonder if National hives would benefit from an empty box at the bottom?
Paul
On Mon, 9 Sep 2019 at 12:25, Gareth John <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
I have a copy of the video itself (without commentary) if anyone is
interested.
The idea that this behaviour, and presumably others, are dependent on hive
geometry I find of great significance. The hive is effectively the *skin* of
the bee organism and if one is in the wrong skin one cannot express one’s
true self. A big jump, but consider how humans feel if they are in a body
which is the wrong gender; they feel they do not fit in their skin. In my
prison teaching one of the prisoners I knew started to go through gender
re-assignment. When I first saw him/her in a dress he/she was transformed;
happy and glowing rather than sad and downcast. "For the first time in my
life I feel I am being who I really am". It left a strong impression on
me.
Gareth
On 6 Sep 2019, at 11:54, Oxnatbees <oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Stefan Grunert, a Norwegian, has posted this 2.5 minute video of Torben
Schiffer talking at the Learning from the Bees conference:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUya5YxcmS0
Luckily for us he has added English subtitles. It is VERY interesting. On
it, Torben shows video taken with a high resolution endoscope inside a hive
simulating a tree cavity* - a vertical tube with plenty of space below the
combs.
It is worth watching twice because the first time, you are trying to
figure out what you're seeing, as the view is from BELOW the combs.
Points of interest:
- Bees washboarding inside the hive, cleaning/drying the walls to
prevent mould, and probably preparatory to propolising it;
- A web of bees below the combs acts as a guard-mob, probably allowing
them to ball hornets. They certainly ball wasps;
- These are not special bees, they were from a framed hive. This
behaviour is enabled by the hive geometry but suppressed in normal hives.
Paul
