Talk:Western honey bee
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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)
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[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)- Try dispute "bee communication " -wikipedia on Googlesearch. The dispute is widespread and certainly deserves to be mentioned in a balanced article. Paul venter 06:17, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
- It is discussed at great length in the accompanying article Bee learning and communication. Since it has its own article, it is only briefly mentioned here. Dyanega 18:08, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
- Try dispute "bee communication " -wikipedia on Googlesearch. The dispute is widespread and certainly deserves to be mentioned in a balanced article. Paul venter 06:17, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Apis mellifera
There is a mistake concerning the genus-species name origin. The name of the genus Apis is indeed Latin for bee. But mellifera is Greek from meli- (not mel!) meaning honey and -fera meaning to bring. At the article about Melissa (which is honey bee in Greek), it is stated that -fera is derived from Greek for wild beast. But -fera is actually derived from Latin for wild beast (e.g. modern word feral). In any case, unless there are any objections (which I can't see why), in 24h I will add the Greek origin of meli- and both probabilities of Greek or Latin origin for -fera. Kalambaki2 23:56, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Types of Hives
"There are seven basic types of beehive: skeps, Langstroth hives, top-bar hives, box hives, log gums, D.E. hives and miller hives."
This is hardly a complete list. Also, what is a "miller" hive? I've never heard of it before. You don't have British Standard, WBC, Smith etc. But to me there are really only two main "types" of beehives. Fixed comb (skeps, gums, box hives etc.), and movable comb (Top Bar Hives, British Standard, Langstroth, Smith, WBC etc.). Movable comb can be subdivided into vertical and horizontal (stacked up boxes vs "coffin" hives). And those could each be divided into those using frames and those using only a top bar. I'll bet without much trouble I could come up with a very long list of hives currently in use in the world which would be much longer than seven. There are certainly more WBC and BS and Smith hives in the world than DE hives (although I've had DE hives and have never had WBC, BS, or Smith hives). If you want a complete list, then let's go for a really complete list. If you want to list the most common ones among English speaking beekeepers, the only two that would make that list would probably be Langstroth and British Standard. If you wanted to add more, WBC and Smith would probably be next on the list.
Michael Bush (talk) 22:10, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
- Given that this is NOT the article on Beehives, if you can find a reliable published source that recognizes only fixed comb and movable comb as "basic types" of beehive, then please go ahead and replace the section of text above with an appropriate citation. Any detailed discussion of types of hive, their relative frequency, and how to classify them should definitely be saved for the Beehive] article and left out of this article; all that is needed here is a brief mention, and a link to the main article on hives. Too much of the material in the articles related to beekeeping practices is uncited, and it would be helpful to have someone who actually has beekeeping literature to help out with those articles. However, this article is more of a bridge between the taxonomy/biology articles and the beekeeping articles, and beekeeping information here should be limited in scope. Dyanega (talk) 17:14, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
[edit] historical image
I thought someone might be interested to incorporate this image in the article which I have uploaded on Commons, mainly for use in the German Wikipedia. Cheers, --Dietzel65 (talk) 08:45, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
