Kitchen Garden Forum

Bees can solve complex mathematical problems which keep computers busy for days, research has shown.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oc ... intcmp=239

The colouring of the picture looks more like wasps

That wonderful naturalist J.H.Fabre conducted experiments on bees and came to the same conclusion about 130 years ago. Although there were no computers to compare them to
These universities should try and keep up

I found this in earth poems, written by him
http://www.thehumangenome.co.uk/THE_HUM ... poems.html -

‘This dental arsenal tells me how extermination came at all times to lop off the surplus of life; it says: ‘On the very spot where you stand meditating upon a shiver of stone, an arm of the sea once stretched, filled with truculent devourers and peaceable victims… I seem to hear the thunder of the waves. Sea-urchins, Lithodomi, Petricolae, Pholaidids have left their signatures upon the rock…You stand stupefied before the cital ardour of the days of old, which was able to supply such a pile of relics in a mere nook of earth.’ JH Fabre, Fossils, Souvenirs of a Naturalist, 1901

You should read the English translations of his insect books NB. Considering the limited equipment available at the time, his observations and attention to detail are amazing.

I would love to read those translations, but while caring for my mother it's almost impossible to get to the library in Rye and return them in time, I get
a carer for just 4 hours respite, that just about covers weekly shopping and the bus journey to and fro - and they are talking about cuts to these services, folk in town only get a couple of hours as they don't have to travel, so I count myself lucky at the moment.