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  • How bees stay cool on hot summer days - research paper

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General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
 #2016  by Chrisbarlow
 19 Feb 2019, 21:49
An interesting article about how bees stay cool in Summer, comments about changing the air flow in specific areas of the hive to some bees can take more heat than others.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/02/190208124703.htm
 #2048  by NigelP
 22 Feb 2019, 09:38
Chrisbarlow wrote:
19 Feb 2019, 21:49
An interesting article about how bees stay cool in Summer, comments about changing the air flow in specific areas of the hive to some bees can take more heat than others.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/02/190208124703.htm
It's been known for a long time that different super-families of bees will commence fanning at different threshold temperatures, the more heat sensitive starting first and others joining in as the heat increases and their genetic determined threshold kicks in.
The sensors are located on the flagellum (coeloconic sensilla). There are little groups of them where some respond to heat, some to humidity and some to CO2 levels, called "moist", "dry" and "thermal" . Bees also regulate the relative humidity and C02 levels within a hive by the same method of fanning.
As our early Victorian beekeepers where wont to do... the draft of air leaving a hive in the height of summer in a solid floor hive is strong enough to extinguish a lighted candle.
You can explain evaporation by physics but you need to take into account the genetic makeup of the bees within a hive as that will determine how much air flow is generated it's not simply physics that is involved etc.
 #2118  by derekm
 26 Feb 2019, 11:17
"You can explain evaporation by physics but you need to take into account the genetic makeup of the bees within a hive as that will determine how much air flow is generated it's not simply physics that is involved etc."
Genetics are just information encoded in chemistry to provide an a blue print for an organism i.e. a genotype, the phenotype is its expression in the physical world, and once there it is all physics. As soon as the wing moves its is all energy exchange and aerodynamics. Biology is an organisation and structure of physical phenomena is not something different. All of the phenomena associated with biology are described in physics, their assembly and persistence is biology. Unless you understand the physical processes in the phenotype space you will not understand the reasons why a genotype that encoded them is successful. Just as the phenotype is the expression of the genotype the phenotype determines the genotypes fate. So i turn your statement into its corollary. " you can explain their actions are genetic but why those genes have been selected is down to the physics, as that will determine if they have any any energy left to live on, its not simply biology"
This is discussed very nicely in Walsh DM. 2015. Organisms, Agency and Evolution. Cambridge University Press.
 #2119  by NigelP
 26 Feb 2019, 13:07
I think you will find the recent discipline of biophysics was started to try to describe the complexity of genetic interactions. It's proved a bit of a failure to date. Mainly because the the physicists and computer programmers who design the algorithms to interpret the genetic data have no idea of the biological complexity of the problems they attempting to explain.
Yet , you don't need anything but a basic understanding of physics to explain and understand how much of biology and genetics works.
Something you would be well advised to take on board in your "Physics Rules All" attitude. Get your hands dirty and provide some actual experimental results to back up your ideas. It's called science.