Honeybee Decision Making

When a honeybee colony becomes overcrowded, a swarm of thousands departs with the old queen to form a new colony. Cornell professor, biologist and beekeeper Thomas Seeley explains how honeybees use swarm intelligence to make the critical decision of which new nest site to pick. Seeley's book, "Honeybee Democracy" was published in 2010 by Princeton University Press.

[@jeanrenaudsally]

Thomas Seeley explains this process so well. Thank you !

[@roiferreach100]

I am blown away, wisdom of bees and wisdom of nature.

[@DavidGorenPrivate]

Dear Thomas,
First of all, bees have probably been doing this for millions of years, so their system is probably better than our democracy, which is very young and premature. They had much more trial and error to converge to an optimal solution. So it seems we do have a lot to learn from them. Second, they seem to do it differently. The beginning is similar to what humans do: Individuals with vision start to advocate their message and gather followers. The same happens with bees: We do see them surrounding and even copying and following the dancing bee, even without foraging themselves. So, like in the human case, more charismatic leaders get more followers. In bees, charisma is measured by the number of dance cycles and other means of showing excitement. This is precisely how parties are formed in the human case. Not all dances have the same influence and impact. The next phase is different and deserves full attention: We humans make, at best, a majority vote among all members of the state, what is called the popular vote. It seems that bees do it differently. In the bee case, the conflicting messages propagate throughout the colony in growing circles. Different messages, which had a different number of excited followers, propagated through most of the colony. In the human case, this would result in a mess. In the bee case, This leads to a moment of coherent decision. It seems that our voting system is artificial, not to mention the electoral college problem. The bees do it naturally and beautifully, which we probably need to learn and try to imitate as much as possible. The first stages seem less artificial in humans, but the last step is. One hint to how the bees do it is that all bees seem constantly excited, in a continuous movement, which may describe humans in a receptive mode rather than being stuck in old opinions and prejudice. The bees seem to be always willing to change their mind coherently. What is most striking is the natural way in which they all agree at the end. Suppose humanity will survive thousands of years to the future. In that case, they may approach the genius expressed long ago by any colony of bees...
Love, Dr. David Goren

[@RubyandTJ]

Looks cozy

[@paulabal6287]

Fascinating information! I am wondering wjat happens if their “democratic” process is cut short ie- some alien in a white suit comes and puts them in a box- “and decides for them”- do the scout bees (that have been captured) continue to dance? Or is the process halted immediately?

[@Stiverton]

Fascinating.

[@christinewade906]

Love this video