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Jul 26, 2006

"That which is not good for the beehive cannot be good for the bees." --Marcus Aurelius

Learning from the Bees

When it comes to bees making decisions, the question is whether the bee or the hive is the individual. Here's how the honeybees do it: when hives of honeybees get too big, they split up; the old queen flies off with a swarm of 10,000 bees or so and over the course of several days, scout bees search for real estate and come back to do waggle dances to promote their finds. So, then, how do the bees decide? By consensus? Voting? After several experiments, researchers concluded that the swarm does not wait for consensus. It senses when there are enough scouts concentrating on one site — a "quorum" of 15 to 20 — that's when the bees get ready to move. Researchers are now teaching organizations "to do the waggle" like the bees.