See the first version [link] for background info, if you are
unfamiliar with how bees communicate the locations of
nectary flowers to each other. That idea proposed to
simulate a bee performing a waggle dance using a fake
bee on
a stick, actuated by a motor and some sort of
mechanism.
In
this idea, I propose instead to use some kind of
screen, such as an LCD or OLED screen, inside the
beehive,
displaying a generated moving image of a bee performing
a waggle dance. This minimizes moving parts and should
reduce cost somewhat, because such screens are already
mass-produced. It also increases adaptability; the image
can be adjusted to see what characteristics the bees
respond to. In this way, it can be used as a device for
scientific experiments on bee communication, not just as
a practical device for beekeepers to tell their bees
where
to go.
The screen should be retractable, so as to avoid blocking
off the honeycomb behind it when the bees need to
access it, and it should also have a textured surface that
bees can easily walk on, so that the real bees can also
perform their own waggle dances on it (to avoid
extending/retracting between consecutive dances, which
may be
disruptive). It can also be a touchscreen, to record the
real bees' waggle dances, and thereby notify the
beekeepers
or scientists of where they've found flowers.
The screen may need to be capable of displaying
ultraviolet light (which, I think, should be possible with
only
minimal retooling of the production line), because the
bees may not pay attention to it if it doesn't have a
similar
spectrum to a real bee. But this is one of the things it
can be used to experiment on. Others include the bees'
acceptance of various values of realisticity of the bee
image and its motion, for example.
It
can also be equipped with:
* speakers (because I
hypothesize based on nothing that bees may respond in
some way to sounds during the waggle dance, and
speakers are cheap enough to include on a lark*), -(ETA:
apparently bees do detect sound by the same mechanism
as they detect electric fields [link])-
* magnetic
field
sensors and coils (because apparently waggle dances'
orientation is influenced in a predictable way by the
ambient magnetic field [link]),
* odor emitters
(because apparently bees also respond strongly to flower
scents as a communication of where to go [link], and
bees emit specific pheromones while dancing [link]),
* radios that emit signals similar to cell phone signals
(because apparently bees can be confused by those
[link]), and
* electric field emitters (possibly a secondary use of
capacitive touchscreen electrodes) (because apparently
the bees in the audience pick up on the dancer's electric
field to observe her motion [link]),
to
experiment with the effect of those variables on the
bees' interpretation of the dance.
As well, it can be
used to
try to find ways to tell bees where *not* to go (e.g.
because there are predators, neonicotinoids, or nectar
that results in bad-tasting honey there). Maybe this can
be done by building a compound dance out of the waggle
dance and the tremble dance [link], which is used
currently to tell other bees "don't go out foraging right
now, but instead help me unload the nectar I'm carrying".
Apparently, also, real bees' waggle dance is quite
inaccurate in conveying the direction and distance of the
nectar source. If the communicator is used to
communicate more accurately than the bees do, this
could be used to experiment with training the bees
themselves to dance more accurately, which might result
in an increase (or a decrease) in the hive's foraging
efficiency.
*Google didn't give me any pages saying larks predate
bees, so this should be fine.
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