ShmoopTube

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Here’s your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by stings.

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Not those stings. The kind that hurt. With venom, not with love songs…

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Here’s a passage about an experiment performed on the communication of honey bees.

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And our test question:

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The scientists decide to run a chromatogram on air outside the hive.

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What would you expect the chromatogram to look like?

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Here are your potential answers…

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What would a chromatogram from outside the hive look like?

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We’ve already got 2 examples of chromatograms in the graphs above, but

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neither of them were taken outside the hive. Let’s take a look.

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Figure A, shown here, was taken inside the hive at the dance floor, where bees were dancing

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and releasing certain compounds that are indicated by peaks A through D.

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Figure B was taken inside the hive, but away from the dance floor.

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The lack of peaks is from the lack of waggle dance compounds being released there.

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So what might we get from a chromatogram taken outside the hive entirely?

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Well, we can assume that since bees only perform the waggle dance in one specific area inside

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the beehive, we probably won’t be seeing those waggle dance compounds on the chromatogram.

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That means no peaks.

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The only possible answer that fits that assumption would be B:

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“It should lack peaks A through D”

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Our answer is B, as in Bee stings.

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Guys, no, come on, we’ve been over this.

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