From: Barry Birkey <barry@birkey.com>
Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2001 02:06:46 -0600
To: <BiologicalBeekeeping@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: Re: Keeping Bees Happy

From: "deelusbybeekeeper" <deelusbybeekeeper@excelonline.com>

> Barry, just because man has not proven it yet on paper does not mean that
> something does not exist or many things might disappear all around us.

Dee -

But just because it's someone's idea that bees think in the same manner as
we do, doesn't make it so. If we are to have meaningful dialog about
beekeeping, it must be grounded in fact, or we could say anything about
everything. We can speculate, but it must be labeled as such.

> You talk like here the bees are looking for a place to go to and I read that
> as -a- place meaning one.

No. "A place" meaning the place they end up calling home, which is one
place.

> But in reality the bees actually send out scouts
> to several locations and then by process of elimination and with guards in
> place at the new location keeping it safe from others, pre-guarding their
> territory they finally make a choice after much deliberationi it seems.

They do send out scouts and end up at one location after scouting out
several, but this does not prove that they are thinking like us, weighing
the pros and cons in their minds, which is nothing like that of ours
(mind n.
1. The human consciousness that originates in the brain and is manifested
especially in thought, perception, emotion, will, memory, and imagination.).

> Bees has brains similar by the way to man and other animals. Just because
> you do not understand or me fully either yet, does not still make it or
> them stupid.

I never said they were stupid. I said they are insects and we are humans and
one can't attribute human characteristics to animals. The two are not the
same. Similar is not same.

> Perhaps to other animals humans don't talk either Barry, at least the way
> they are used to. But they do indeed communicate. Maybe like elephants with
> sound vibrations our ears cannot pick up!

Yes, I would say all living things communicate. But as you point out with
the elephants, in vary different ways. I don't believe animals (bees) even
have the capacity to wonder or think about us humans as they don't have the
ability to reason.

> Yes I see what you are getting at, but I still don't see you proving what
> you are saying either.

No need to prove it. We all see reality. It is for those equating the
complexities and grandeur of the human psyche to the honeybee that need to
show some kind of proof I would argue.

> Lack of communication here?

I hope so.

> But IMPOV bees are very intelligent,

Intelligent they are. And even more so their Creator.

> someday maybe we might get intelligent enough to understand
> and so talk to them and the other animals also. But then maybe we won't what
> to really hear what they have to say about us.

I already talk to my bees and dog. My dog is pretty good at understanding me
when I say his name sternly. Of course he associates that tone with a
newspaper coming down across his nose a few times when he was younger so he
has learned to stop whatever he was doing and lay down. I don't believe for
a second that he knows why I said his name sternly. Now the bees, no matter
how sternly I talk to them, they don't pay any attention to me. I guess I
need to use the old rolled up newspaper on them.

Regards,
Barry