Do bees know their keeper?

[van from Arkansas]

This is a tough question.  I have owned hives that I believe knew I was not a threat and would tolerate my presence, my hands at the entrance snatching drones out of mid air.  I don?t think the bees knew me personally, just my common appearance, maybe my scent???  However, there was a trust, a definite trust between me and a few select hives that I spent hours observing from up close.

Yesterday raining lightly, while requeening a hive, the bees started to become airborne and excited.  I calmly talked to the bees and they settled down.  Did they settle down because of my calm voice?  If avoidable don?t work bees on rainy or cloudy days.

Now so there is no confusion, I have owned bees that wanted a piece of me.  Just mean bees that did not like humans, period.  No gentle bees with some hives.

I think some bees can be gentled by experience or you might call it exposure.  I am not talking about the African honeybees, there are limits to what I say.

[BeeMaster2]

I think they recognize you if you spend a lot of time in the Apiary. During my first year I used to sit between my hives and watch them. Never used protection. I was gone for 3 weeks and then returned and walked slowly into my Apiary. A bee came out and immediately stung me. I back off and slowly returned with no problem. I think that was a new bee that did not recognize me.
Quite often I will bee working my bees with someone else and they will get stung an I will not. That is with me doing almost all the hands in the hive work and they are just assisting.
Usually I have no protection and they have a full jack/screen on and they still get stung.
Jim Altmiller

[van from Arkansas]

quite often I will bee working my bees with someone else and they will get stung an I will not. That is with me doing almost all the hands in the hive work and they are just assisting.

Now that you mention this Jim, I just remembered I have experienced the exact same thing.

[Nock]

Very interesting.

[The15thMember]

I remember reading this story somewhere, but I unfortunately can?t remember where. There was a guy who had some hives on his property, but he was not the caretaker of the hives; the beekeeper was a Russian fellow, and he always spoke to the bees in Russian. When the Russian fellow died, the property owner began taking care of the hives, and the bees were suddenly much nastier than before. He wondered if it wasn?t partly due to the fact that he was unfamiliar to them and that his English sounded different to the bees than the Russian spoken by the previous keeper.

[CoolBees]

I believe they "get to know you" (and maybe trust you a little). I don't know how to put it into words, but I think [feel?] that they know. I also talk to them when they get 'up tight' and they seem to calm down. ... I just came out of the Apiary. Spent about 40 mins sitting upwind of 4 hives - 2 are swarms that have come in the last 6 weeks, and had been a "little testy". Not 1 bee came to check me out tonight. ... I think they "know".

When my daughter joined me in the Apiary for the first time about 4 weeks ago, they were "checking her out" in force - and she was just holding the smoker off to the side.

[BeeMaster2]

Several years ago, I was pulling honey from my hives, with my neighborwho had working with me for since day one. He had a friend that wanted to watch and sat in a chair 30 feet away. He was just sitting there and a bee flew out and stung him.  Neither on e of us were stung and were were in the hives. The bees only went after a total stranger.
 Jim Altmiller

[herbhome]

I have a similar experience. They are much testier with sweet wife than with me. I have a plastic chair in the beeyard and I'll take breaks there watching them go about their business and they barely notice me. She...they will head bump and buzz at like she has no business nearby.

[TheHoneyPump]

42

[The15thMember]

42

I?m apparently going to have to read Hitchhiker?s Guide.

[incognito]

Let me throw this idea out there:

Do you smell like your hive? Is there scent on your clothing or shoes from the hive? Are there any changes in behavior after you wash or replace your gear?
Have they got used to your smell?

Should I throw out the vacant queen cage sitting next to my computer or keep it in my pocket when visiting the hive?

[blackforest beekeeper]

42

It seems the right answer, but I fear it`s the wrong question...

[van from Arkansas]

42

HP, I expected more from you.  You usually provide well thought out answers with possible causes.  Some very enlightening answers to some very complex questions, regarding honeybees, I might add.

42 is an fictional AI answer, point well made,  We have a ways to go on artificial intelligence.  AI cannot pass a 6th grade math test, 6th grade!!  So please, HP, I would appreciate your input.
Cheers.

[MikeyN.C.]

V from A, I believe the old saying a dog or horse can smell the anxiety, and being apprehensive . Don't know if it's true . After watching master beeks like iddee , I learned very quick that gentleness is the best.
But have seen a woman, our state inspector go into a hot yard. And her being there seems to calm the yard. In my yard wifey doesn't wear anything standing next to me. I wear the rope type veil (that you tie around) just in case.
But like you said I talk to the girls.

[TheHoneyPump]

Preamble, all IMHO

Bees acclimatize and adapt to their surrounding environment. Instinctual adaptation. They are tolerant to a variety of conditions. If that environment includes the frequent visits and disruptions by a beekeeper, then that is what they will also acclimatize to. The keeper becomes a normalized presence and set of events of their environment. It then becomes a matter of if the bees regard the beekeeper's presence and activities as tolerable. Whether they perceive a threat or not. If there are often persons in the bee yard and no harm is done, then that becomes a normalized tolerated disruption in their environment. As a normalized element, they cannot get any madder at you than they can the wind or the rain or the snowstorm or the swaying trees around them.

I believe the question of whether bees know and like or dislike a specific individual person would be pushing boundaries between what is instinctual adaptation and the phycological depth capacity of a bee. Very much similar territory to the discussion of whether bees and beasts think and feel. Hence, 42.

I do agree with the posts above which refer to the bees adapting to frequent visits to bee yard. Where I diverge is where implied they like one person and no one else. Their response to a specific person is determined by a number of factors. One being what has become the norm of their environment and what that person is doing there.

[van from Arkansas]

HP, that is an very intelligent well thought out response that I was hoping for.  I doubt if my bees can recognize me as an individual rather a human.  Can the bees distinguish between folks, say a child verses a man.  I don?t know

On subject but a different critter:

Ticks, a colony of ticks for twelve years was maintained in a single controlled room.  The ticks were moved to a new controlled room and every single tick died.  Same person maintained the ticks, same food, same container, everything the same except the ticks were moved, to a new room, about 50 feet, they all died.  Reason unknown to this day.  Medically speaking to lose such a colony of ticks maintained for years was devastating for medical researchers.

minks.  In same facility, minks were raised due to the fact the mink is the only know host for a specific viral disease of children.  Every year the single caretaker would go on vacation.  The replacement wearing same boots, same white coat, same respirator, feeding exact same food caused the female mink to abort.  Every year this happened.  Minks certainly can distinguish the slightest change, the change of a caretaker.

Why the death of ticks and minks to abort their young: 42, is the best answer I can give.  Brother Adams makes no mention of bees ability to know their keeper.  If any person would know, he would.

I think your answer, HP, is spot on, the ability to determine, interpret threats relative to their environment.  I would wager via evolutionary genetics some bees interpretation of perceived threats evolved to meet the environmental factors such as the African honey bees with their host of invaders from honey badgers to man.

I also agree with above beeks.

[incognito]

I doubt if my bees can recognize me as an individual rather a human.  Can the bees distinguish between folks, say a child verses a man...

If I had to bet, I would take the opposite position (but only for a very small dollar amount).

From what I have learned about bees so far, it seems that tiny amounts of pheromones are critical to their lives. How do guard bees identify intruders? How does a colony learn that their queen is missing or accept a new one? Why when mating colonies are the hive bodies separated by a piece of newspaper until they chew through it?

Bears, deer, shark, dogs have way more scent receptors than man. I don't know for sure but I bet man is closer to the bottom of the list when it comes to recognizing scents. It is amazing to watch a dog track a deer blood trail. We rely on sight, dogs rely on smell. My archery club sets up a demonstration each year. The blood scent is indistinguishable to man, but not to beast.

[saltybluegrass]

The - telling of the bees- is a tradition back to old country. They believed the bees to be a contact from this world to life hereafter.
The more we become WOKE in our forward thinking ,  the more old wives tales make sense. We aren?t that much ahead of 200 years ago by looking at the eloquent writing of our forefathers to the emails of today!!
 I put my finger on the landing boards several times a week and also sit in a chair to watch.
My body vibrates so hard with add/adhd-hyperactivity that I believe the bee?s timing and mine cohabitate.
Like that robin Williams movie Awakenings- that the patients had vibrated so hard they were locked up with paralysis  until a drug was introduced to unwind them. 

I vote yes-

Also my San Antonio friend left his bees for a month or two and they were uncharacteristically violent to him upon return

[van from Arkansas]

Howdy Barefoot, could you explain WOKE.  One of the many I don?t understand.  Thanks Sir.
All good things.
Van

[drobbins]

I like the European tradition where, when the beekeeper dies, somebody has to go tell the bees
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telling_the_bees