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[Note: Clicking on the linked text will take you to a reference page on our sponsor's site where you can read a more extensive review of the work that I'm referring to. You can also order it or just put it in your shopping cart for another time.]

Yesterday, I was sitting out on the patio relaxing and enjoying a cup of coffee. It was early morning and the day promised to be warm and beautiful. Nearby a bumble bee hovered above a red flower. She was doing exactly what one would expect a bumble bee to be doing, gathering pollen. This would be later processed into honey and wax. Don't ask me how, I can't even tell you the name of the flower.

The question occurred to me as to why these creatures are not raised commercially like their close relatives. If you had asked me when I was a young child, I would have told you it was because they were bigger and meaner and everyone was frightened by them. I have since learned through my own observations that although they are in fact bigger, if anything they are even less agressive than the smaller honey bee. I also could have speculated that their honey didn't taste good. But then I remember as a Boy Scout, some old-timer telling me how he procured their honey by leaving a vinegar jug half full of water outside their nest. The bees will enter the narrow neck of the jug, but will become trapped when they try to leave. Eventually the entire nest will enter the jug and drown. He told me that the honey which he found in the vacant nest was of excellent quality. My only thought at the time was that it would be a lot quicker and easier to go to the super-market.

Further inquiry revealed that bumble bees hang out in smaller social groups. This being true, it is easy to see that their honey production is probably not as efficient.

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For me, this raises another interesting question. Do they engage in the same elaborate social behaviors which have been well documented for the honey bee, eg. the directional dance which helps their co-workers to find pollen sources? (Von Frisch) Or, are they a more primitive culture which which relies on more random, "hit or miss" behaviors?

I remember that as a Psychology student, work done by behavioral biologists (or Ethologists) was always the most interesting. Although the old nature-nurture controversy was no longer a hot issue, I found it significant that a good deal of the behavior they observed seemed to be "hard-wired" ie. innate as opposed to learned. Based on their findings, one tends to think of Insects as little flying ROM chips which respond to their environment accordingly. Evidence from other species indicates that in "higher" forms of life there are also strong innate components.

A good example is the work of Konrad Z. Lorenz. Particularly relevent is his work with geese demonstrating "imprinting", an innate bonding response usually to the young gosling's parent, but sometimes to Konrad Z. Lorenz. The zoologist, Desmond Morris argues for some very definite vestiges of instinctual primate behavior occurring among urban humans.

Most Introductory Psychology texts will acknowledge the role of "naturalistic observation" as a legitimate tool of science. Yet, browse through any of the scholarly journals or the dissertation abstracts within Psychology and tabulate how many of the papers will fall into this category. Instead the "evidence" is generated from carefully controlled situations involving animals specifically bred and raised to do things that are totally atypical for their species. Or, college sophomores being asked if they'd rather be a thief or a bum on some insipid "paper and pencil" test.

Is it any wonder that the interesting innate components of behavior are ignored? The answer is simple. There's no time to go out and play with the geese.

Back to the bumble bee. I have a final musing. I am presently unable to reference this fact, but apparently at one time the anatomy of the bumble bee was studied by aeronautical engineers and it was concluded that by all engineering principles, the creature should be totally incapable of flight. The bumble bee of course does not realize this and flies anyway.

RJS/Zimmie

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