Talk:Western honey bee
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Western honey bee is within the scope of WikiProject Beekeeping, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to beekeeping on Wikipedia. To participate simply edit the article and, if you wish, list yourself at our members list. Don't hesitate to ask questions! |
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The discussion of A. mellifera caucasica includes a technical term that may not be familiar to all readers. "PROPOLIZE: To fill with propolis, or bee glue; used to strengthen the comb and seal cracks, it also has antimicrobial properties." [1] Walter Siegmund (talk) 02:12, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Lots of new stuff will come out of the gene sequencing.
Really just added this as a heads-up for the recent sequencing of the honeybee. The three big items which need incorporating are,
Genetic evidence for Africa bee migrations to Europe.
Sequencing shows large number of genes for smell and low number for taste.
e.g. Seen on New Scientist and National Geo and Nature, the honeybee has 170 genes for odour receptors. This is more than the two other insects which have been sequenced so far, the fruit fly with 62 and the mosquito with 79. This is in contrast to the honeybees only having 10 taste receptors compared with about 70 in the other insects. Hunny tastes so yummy - Pooh.
Master Regulator genes that manage bee behaviour Ttiotsw 09:10, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
- This could be Main Page material. Here's the editorial in Nature. Please update the article and post a headline on Wikipedia:In the news section on the Main Page/Candidates. Thanks. --64.229.226.140 04:39, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] This should be the main page for anything specifically related to A. mellifera
Too many editors were placing content that specifically and exclusively referred to A. mellifera in the Honey bee article; I have moved all of these setions and their references and links here, where they belong. The Honey bee article should be reserved for content that refers to all of the species of Apis collectively; content regarding A. mellifera should, in the future, be placed here, or on the pages for the different subspecies, or different mellifera-related topical pages. Peace, Dyanega 00:56, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
- I am uncomfortable with that solution and have explained my reasons at Talk:Honey bee. Rossami (talk) 03:11, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
- I realize that you are uncomfortable, and I have made a few accommodating changes - in addition to explaining my reasons - in Honey bee and Talk:Honey bee. Readers will just have to get used to coming to this page, the same way they need to navigate to the house mouse page after typing in mouse, since "mouse" in WP actually refers to a genus, and not a species, exactly as in the present case. The house mouse is not the only mouse, the African elephant is not the only elephant, the Norway rat is not the only rat, the mallard is not the only duck, the eastern cottontail is not the only rabbit, the bottlenose dolphin is not the only dolphin, the house sparrow is not the only sparrow, etc., even though "common understanding" of the more general names is that they refer to those single, familiar species. WP should properly reflect this hierarchy of names, and honey bee was an exception that had gone uncorrected for too long. If you honestly believe that you are correct, I would ask you to make your objections known to the editors of all the articles I have mentioned above, and any others where a single well-known species functions in the vernacular as a synecdoche for a much more inclusive name. If you can persuade the other editors to adopt "common understanding" use of common names instead of technically correct usage, then and ONLY then it might be acceptable to revert to using the honey bee article to discuss just one species of honey bee. I do not expect you will find any agreement with that approach for the other species above, and I see no reason that honey bees should be treated as an exceptional case, as is done for dog, cat, or cow (and which are vastly more universal). The criterion cannot be "are average people unaware of the existence of multiple species in a group?" because most laypeople probably are not aware that mice, rats, rabbits, dolphins, and sparrows all are represented by many species. Dyanega 23:25, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
- Please stop putting words into my mouth. I didn't say that I hated the idea nor have I attempted to revert your change. As you said, you are making some significant changes to honey bee to make the distinction more visible to average readers and to make it easier for them to find the page they really want. I'm more than willing to grant the benefit of doubt while you restructure the respective pages. If it works, great. (And if I can help, I will. I've held back because I don't yet have a clear picture of we should structure the relationships between these related topics.) If it doesn't work, we can discuss it then. One of the great features of Wikipedia is how easy it is to take an article back to a prior version if we decide that's the right thing to do.
- So, having finally admitted that I've never liked the amorphous relationships between the various bee-related topic pages, I'd like to propose the development of that structure as a task for the newly formed WikiProject on beekeeping. Let's take a few minutes to plan out roughly what kind of content should be at bee, what at honey bee, what at species or race-level pages and what should be sliced out to pages that might cross multiples of these pages. Since you seem to have a vision for that structure, would you be willing to create the first draft? Rossami (talk) 00:19, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
- I apologize if I interpreted "am uncomfortable with" as meaning "dislike" - it is an understandable interpretation, I think you'll admit. My "vision", as I mentioned to Martin, is simply that I oversee the taxonomy of the Insecta, and so any insect page with a taxobox is considered within my jurisdiction, especially if it relates to bees, which are my specialty. The structure for taxonomy is that of the Linnaean hierarchy; that is the only structure I am advocating be adhered to, and placing information exclusively about a single species on a genus-level page is a violation of that logical hierarchy, and should only be done if that species lacks its own page. I have no plans or ideas for any other pages besides those with taxoboxes, which is where our two respective wikiprojects overlap. Dyanega 01:01, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
- I realize that you are uncomfortable, and I have made a few accommodating changes - in addition to explaining my reasons - in Honey bee and Talk:Honey bee. Readers will just have to get used to coming to this page, the same way they need to navigate to the house mouse page after typing in mouse, since "mouse" in WP actually refers to a genus, and not a species, exactly as in the present case. The house mouse is not the only mouse, the African elephant is not the only elephant, the Norway rat is not the only rat, the mallard is not the only duck, the eastern cottontail is not the only rabbit, the bottlenose dolphin is not the only dolphin, the house sparrow is not the only sparrow, etc., even though "common understanding" of the more general names is that they refer to those single, familiar species. WP should properly reflect this hierarchy of names, and honey bee was an exception that had gone uncorrected for too long. If you honestly believe that you are correct, I would ask you to make your objections known to the editors of all the articles I have mentioned above, and any others where a single well-known species functions in the vernacular as a synecdoche for a much more inclusive name. If you can persuade the other editors to adopt "common understanding" use of common names instead of technically correct usage, then and ONLY then it might be acceptable to revert to using the honey bee article to discuss just one species of honey bee. I do not expect you will find any agreement with that approach for the other species above, and I see no reason that honey bees should be treated as an exceptional case, as is done for dog, cat, or cow (and which are vastly more universal). The criterion cannot be "are average people unaware of the existence of multiple species in a group?" because most laypeople probably are not aware that mice, rats, rabbits, dolphins, and sparrows all are represented by many species. Dyanega 23:25, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Dispute regarding bee communication
Bob Parks of the University of Maryland claims the bee's genome is insufficiently complex to allow for bee communication. http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN06/wn110306.html 64.81.192.156 01:05, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
- And his credentials in the area of bee research are exactly what again? Or even basic biology? Chaos theory, perhaps? Not according to the credentials page of his own website...
When his criticism gets published in a peer-reviewed journal, we can consider it. Rossami (talk) 02:25, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
