Researchers discover bees can be left or right-handed | Hacker News Reader

Researchers discover bees can be left or right-handed

abc.net.au

78 pointsnreece16 comments

I'm a beekeeper, and I have a home-made bee escape to clear bees out of boxes that are ready to be harvested. I put it between the honey super and the brood box, and as it gets colder at night, bees move downward to keep the brood warm. The escape has a series of baffles that the bees can only navigate in one direction, so they're unable to get back into the honey super.

The only reason it works is that bees will consistently turn in one direction when they're faced with an obstacle, very much like a maze-traversing algorithm. Luckily my bee escape doesn't assume right or left handedness of the bees :)

The design exists online and has been around for ages, so beekeepers at least were already aware of this behavior.

How many escape do you use per board? I’m just knocking some together and can’t decide - we are early in the flow and I’m filling boxes at an alarming rate (first season).

There's one escape hole on the board. The escape takes up quite a bit of room so I think you'd have trouble fitting more. Congrats on your honey!

One of these things?

http://www.beeculture.com/make-a-triangle-bee-escape-heck-ma...

Basically a bee diode.

Yup! That looks just like mine.

are any ambidextrous?

Ambeedextrous?

I laughed.

You’re a beekeeper in the making. Awful puns seem to be part of the industry. One local company replaces the word ‘be’ with ‘bee’ in every instance. It’s horrid.

  > You’re a beekeeper in the making

Or just redditor. I do like puns on reddit. I am not a native English speaker so those are some additional language fun.

At least left-handed bees don't have to live with: Moulded Scissors, All scissors (as the blades cut wrong) Double doors that open the wrong way, can-openers, coin slots in machines designed to be used by the right hand only, any moulded hand grip, 'ergonomic' mice... I could go on, but it's early, and I'm too tired.

Left-handed scissors are a revelation, if you've never had them they're worth hunting for. (I like Fiskars.)

But yes, agreed so hard. From left-handed guitars, to hockey-sticks, snowboards, we often have to go out of our way to get things that are as "easy" as the more common version.

Snowboards? In what way? (Genuinely curious what you mean, been snowboarding for 24 years and can't guess, but of course I'm right handed!)

Sorry that was a particularly bad example on my part! I was just thinking of sports that I take part in where there is a difference.

Snowboards are symmetrical, but there is a choice between left-foot-forward and right-foot-forward. Not something that makes a significant difference in practice, once I'd realized I could stand "the other way" snowboarding was easy, before then I struggled.

None of those things have ever bothered me, but mobile phones and apps are all righthanded. The back button is hardwired into most phones (all?) and the dominant thumb cannot touch it without shifting my whole hand, sounds insignificant for those who don't experience this but try to imagine it everytime you press back.

Waiting patiently for a lefthanded phone. Getting close to a decade now.

Does someone have a direct link to the paper or study. I always hate hunting for them in news articles.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0184343

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