Wednesday, April 25, 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
This month’s meeting will feature a presentation, titled “The Bee Hive as a Honey Factory”, by renowned Horace White Professor of Biology at the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell University and 2001 recipient of the Humboldt Prize in Biology, Thomas Seeley. Professor Seeley is also the author of several books on honeybee behavior, including “Honeybee Democracy” and “The Wisdom of the Hive” that are both widely read and well received within the beekeeping community. For more information about Professor Seeley and his work please go to Thomas D Seeley – Cornell University.
In Professor Seely’s own words: “We will explore how a colony of honey bees operates as a factory that produces honey efficiently despite tremendous day-to-day swings in the supply of nectar, the raw material for making honey. An important feature of the organization of the honey production process is a division of labor between the nectar foragers, elderly workers who toil outside the hive collecting the nectar, and the nectar receivers, middle-age workers who toil inside the hive converting the nectar into honey. We will see how the bees can boost their colony’s rate of nectar collecting during a honey flow, using the waggle dance and the shaking signal. And we will see how the bees can also boost their colony’s rate of nectar processing – to keep the rates of nectar collecting and nectar processing in balance – by means of the tremble dance and stop signal. For this talk, I will draw heavily on material reported in my book The Wisdom of the Hive, and I will show videos of bees producing all the signals mentioned above: waggle dance, shaking signal, tremble dance, and stop signal.”
Please note that this meeting is expected to be well attended and will therefore take place at Bee School rather than at the clubhouse. Please also be advised that free parking is available behind the building but may be at a premium so car pool if you can.
PCBA Bee School ~ Map -> 430 Plymouth St, Halifax