{"id":"5fc0d6156cee070006c0f73d","slug":"honeybee-democracy-en","title":"Honeybee Democracy","audio_url":"https://hls.blinkist.io/bibs/5fc0d6156cee070006c0f73d/5fc0d6166cee070006c0f73f-T1606473640.m4a?Expires=1652847697&Signature=ELDA2WUumJDZwvX46kdHXXEcEOtZHuVNaxQPsLtE3HXaoVYOvSeqsd7LnIdDY3yA8bwfhwQGJL0TDURCmt7ytbUMPbBgzYWBQiuglcZCx0DbAl5mekRj~NoILgsgpupWMsELdiZfo5AD3Slg2HbBzMAq~1WxxTNWFmN31Wgzz5PYpPMPNxlQwP~wwmotj4BoPeSCEVQ3T2nobRGIAMb7OL-dBfwQMaaVjihpl40Uvz6gzT~6g1PVuQS3L5uQbDrlAl4Iqb5XqW0P35wNHjWjwKn5N9S-x5ffwMx6C0V-ma3s1dGxOYo3vQ00JsGAbbfspMbHRqd8-XjuxrBrHXNYaA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJXJM6BB7FFZXUB4A","chapters":[{"id":"5fc0d6166cee070006c0f73f","title":"Each year, honeybees choose a new nest site through a complex, democratic process.","text":"

Much to the distress of beekeepers everywhere, there’s one event that happens every year. In late spring or early summer, two-thirds of all the honeybees in a hive gather into a big, buzzing ball and form a cluster on a nearby tree branch. They stay there for a few hours or days before finally buzzing off to a brand new home.

But how do they choose their new home? How do they make sure it’s big and safe enough for a whole hive of bees? And, when they all fly there together, how do they know where to go?

As the author has discovered over decades of careful research, the process by which bees find a new nest site is both fascinating and democratic. So much so, that we could learn from it ourselves.

The key message here is: Each year, honeybees choose a new nest site through a complex, democratic process.

Humans have been fascinated by bees for centuries, and have kept them for honey since ancient Egyptian times. But it was only in the twentieth century that we began to understand much about them, and a lot of that work was done by a pioneering German scientist named Martin Lindauer.

One day in 1949, Lindauer was gazing at a swarm of bees when he noticed something unusual. A few bees were performing waggle dances – the movements that bees use to tell each other where nectar is located. But these particular waggle dances weren’t quite the same as normal. For one, the dancers weren’t carrying any pollen, as they normally would. Plus, a lot of them seemed to be dirty – one was covered with soot, another with brick dust, and yet another with what seemed to be flour.

Lindauer had a suspicion. Had these bees been out scouting for a new home?

It took years of experiments, but Lindauer eventually confirmed his hypothesis – and, later, the author continued this line of research in the United States. The more the scientists uncovered about the complex process by which bees make the life-or-death decision of where to build their home, the more impressed they became with the bees’ democratic debating skills. These days, the author even uses methods inspired by honeybees when he chairs meetings!

All in all, the nest-finding process is so enthralling that it’s worth examining in detail. And that’s what we’ll do in the next few blinks.

"},{"id":"5fc0d6166cee070006c0f740","title":"A hive of honeybees acts together as a single, brilliantly organized unit.","text":"

What are bees, anyway? Before we tumble headfirst into the author’s research, like a bee into a crocus flower, let’s go over some fundamentals.

Before bees, there were wasps. It seems that bees evolved from wasps around 100 million years ago, back in the time of the dinosaurs. The key difference between wasps and bees is that bees aren’t carnivorous – they get by exclusively on flower pollen.

There are almost 20,000 species of bee, and most live and nest by themselves. Honeybees, though, are highly social. In fact, they come together so effectively that they’re often called a superorganism – a whole colony that acts as a single creature, even though it’s made up of some 10,000 individuals.

The key message here is: A hive of honeybees acts together as a single, brilliantly organized unit.

At the heart of the hive is the queen, who despite her grand name has just one task: laying eggs. Each summer she lays 150,000.

The vast majority of these eggs develop into worker bees, which are all female. Only around 5 percent are males, called drones, whose sole purpose is to track down queens from other colonies and mate with them.

After the queen lays eggs in a few of the hive’s cells, known as queen cells, preparations begin for the swarm. The queen starts to be treated differently by the workers – they feed her less, and even start shaking and biting her. She’ll end up losing about 25 percent of her body weight – so that she’s light enough to be able to fly.

A few days later, the hive will be ready to swarm, and two-thirds of the bees – including the queen – fly away from the nest, never to return. They’ll settle on a tree branch – for now.

Meanwhile, back at the original hive a new queen emerges from her cell, announcing her presence to the hive with special sounds known as toots.

If she hears a sound in reply – a quack – she may be in trouble. Quacks are the sound of other new queens, still in their cells, waiting to get out. If more than one queen emerges, they’ll fight to the death.

But that’s another story. We’re going to focus on what happens to the swarm of bees that’s flown off and is still, as you’ll recall, hanging precariously from a tree.

"},{"id":"5fc0d6166cee070006c0f741","title":"Honeybees evaluate potential nest sites carefully to find the best possible new home.","text":"

The honeybees will hang patiently from their tree branch for anywhere between a few hours and a few days. They certainly won’t rush into a decision about where to go – it’s much too important for that. If they get the wrong site, the colony may well not make it through the winter.

But just what sort of site are they looking for? What is it that makes an ideal home for honeybees?

Remember Martin Lindauer, the bee expert from earlier? Well, way back in 1955, he suggested that the best way to find out would be to “ask the bees themselves.” So that’s exactly what the author did.

The key message is: Honeybees evaluate potential nest sites carefully to find the best possible new home.

The author decided to take his research to Appledore Island off the coast of Maine, in New England. It was the perfect site. Far away from the mainland, it boasted a welcoming climate, yet contained no native honeybees of its own. The author’s bees would have the run of the place.

He made a set of boxes with adjustable proportions, and positioned them around the island in a range of conditions. Then, he conducted a series of careful experiments to determine which of the various boxes the bees liked best, and which factors they were evaluating.

It turned out that the bees favored a nest site that was around 40 liters in capacity, with a small entrance – about 12 square centimeters in area – at the bottom. They preferred it if the nest faced south, probably because it was warmer, and it was better if it was high up, which made it harder to attack.

Other factors didn’t matter to the bees. They had no preference for rounded or tall spaces, and they didn’t mind if the space was wet or drafty, because they can fix those problems themselves.

How does a honeybee actually find out all of this information? Watching his artificial nests on Appledore Island, the author noticed that a honeybee spends an average of 37 minutes making around 30 journeys inside the new space, walking around and making short flights.

Through this, these remarkable little creatures are able to do a full inspection – including working out how big a site is. Once finished, the bee heads home, with plenty of information to tell its hive mates.

"},{"id":"5fc0d6166cee070006c0f742","title":"Scout bees spread the word about potential nest sites, and gradually reach agreement.","text":"

There are lots of different forms of democracy. Human politics tends to be organized around representative democracy, in which individuals make decisions on the population’s behalf. Honeybees, however, use a model closer to direct democracy: a system where many individuals make decisions directly.

The decision-making bees aren’t the entire swarm but several hundred experienced worker bees known as scout bees. These are the bees that fly out and evaluate potential nest sites.

But they don’t communicate their knowledge to a central authority. Instead, they pass it on to their peers, who then go and make up their own minds. In this way, a true consensus slowly emerges.

The key message here is: Scout bees spread the word about potential nest sites, and gradually reach agreement.

Most of the time, when a bee returns from a decent potential nest site, she’ll get straight on with a waggle dance. This dance gives the surrounding bees important information – like how far the site is from the swarm, and its direction relative to the sun, so that the other bees can track it down.

But there’s another feature of the waggle dance that’s also important. As the author discovered on Appledore Island, a bee’s dance indicates a site’s quality. If a nest site is only mediocre, a bee will dance with only mild enthusiasm – a top-quality site, on the other hand, will mean a very vigorous dance that the bee repeats many times.

Because this more enthusiastic waggle dance goes on for longer, it catches the attention of many more scout bees. Which results in more bees deciding to go and see the site for themselves.

That’s why, over time, a high-quality nest site gains increased support. The ripple effect means each enthusiastic dance leads to several more.

On rare occasions, the system can go wrong. One of Martin Lindauer’s colonies found two roughly equal potential nest sites, which both built up a lot of support from the dancing scout bees. Eventually, something remarkable happened: when the swarm set off, it split in two. In the confusion, the queen was lost, and the bees returned, rather sheepishly, to their old hive.

Why doesn’t that happen all the time? If any decent nest site gains more and more support, why isn’t it common for bees to end up divided? In the next blink, we’ll explore how honeybees have finessed this complex process.

"},{"id":"5fc0d6166cee070006c0f743","title":"Mistakes are a rarity when it comes to choosing a new nest site.","text":"

Returning to Appledore Island, the author devised an experiment to find out how often bees choose the best available nest site. He positioned five boxes around the island, deliberately making one box ideal, and four only acceptable. He then encouraged five different swarms, one at a time, to choose a new home.

Four out of the five swarms opted for the ideal site. Not a perfect score, but certainly proof that honeybees are skilled when it comes to making the correct decision.

The key message is: Mistakes are a rarity when it comes to choosing a new nest site.

Why not a perfect score? In the one instance where the bees chose a less-than-ideal site, something unlikely had happened: neither of the bees that found and evaluated the best site had performed a waggle dance when they got back. So the message about it never got out.

That accidental oversight reveals a significant point about the process. Any individual bee might make a mistake, but when a large number of bees is doing the same thing, the risk is limited and the best decision almost always emerges eventually.

To understand the process better, let’s look at one specific bee, named Red, after the blob of paint the author daubed on her back. One morning, Red found an ideal nest site. When she returned home, she performed an excited waggle dance lasting a whole six minutes. Then she went back to the site, for a second evaluation. But, when she returned from this second trip, she didn’t dance at all.

Surprisingly, it’s standard scout behavior to stop advertising a site relatively soon. In other words, scout bees do something that humans don’t: they become less passionate about their opinion over time. And, strangely enough, that actually helps the process along.

First, remember that the site won’t usually be overlooked, because after the initial waggle dance many bees will have gone off to inspect it for themselves – which is what happened with Red’s site. Second, it’s beneficial for bees to lose enthusiasm because it means that mediocre sites will always struggle to attract support. No bee will adamantly continue to champion an average site, so, over time, support for it will dwindle to nothing.

Humans aren’t like that – we’re more stubborn! But perhaps we could learn a little from bees. We could step back from debates more often, and trust people other than ourselves.

"},{"id":"5fc0d6166cee070006c0f744","title":"When the time comes to move, a swarm of honeybees acts with remarkable cohesion.","text":"

Unless something unusual happens, one potential new nest site will eventually gain enough support that the bees are ready to move in. But what then?

How exactly does a swarm of some 10,000 bees, hanging out on a tree branch, suddenly realize it’s time to move to a new home? And how exactly does the swarm get there? After all, only the scout bees have been to the site – and not even all of them.

It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that the bees have developed their own ingenious solutions.

The key message here is: When the time comes to move, a swarm of honeybees acts with remarkable cohesion.

First of all, let’s consider how honeybees know when to leave for their new nest site. For a long time, scientists couldn’t work it out, but on Appledore Island the author discovered the answer.

You might assume that the bees decide to move once a consensus has been reached at the old hive. But that’s not quite right. There’s no evidence of any consensus-finding behavior. Instead, the author consistently found that the scout bees would initiate the move once they could see around 20 or 30 other scout bees at the new site. Rather than checking that the whole swarm is in agreement, they simply check that a particular site has sufficient support.

Once a scout bee is sure the time has come, she returns to the nest and begins making a high-pitched noise known as piping. This alerts the bees to the move that’s coming, and prompts them to get ready by raising the swarm’s temperature.

Then, the scout bees change their behavior again. They now start buzz running, which is pretty much what it sounds like – they run in all directions across the swarm, spreading their wings and buzzing loudly. It’s a clear signal of what’s about to happen.

And then the swarm takes off, with the scout bees leading the way – behavior that was confirmed in 2006 using advanced computing technology that tracked each individual bee in a swarm. The author and his colleagues observed the scout bees repeatedly shooting off to the front, setting an example of where to go.

As it approaches the site, the swarm gradually slows down, coming to a graceful halt just outside. The bees filter into their new home, and get straight to work.

"},{"id":"5fc0d6176cee070006c0f745","title":"We can learn a lot from the democratic decision-making process of honeybees.","text":"

A swarm of bees, as we’ve already mentioned, is a bit like a single organism. More specifically, it can be likened to a large, buzzing brain – it really does work in a similar way. An individual bee is much like a neuron, in that it plays a small but vital part in gathering and processing information so that decisions can be made.

But from a different perspective, bees can also be likened to people. In fact, as the author has found, the honeybees’ decision-making process could actually help us to make better collective decisions.

The key message here is: We can learn a lot from the democratic decision-making process of honeybees.

First off, we should note that, in addition to the obvious ones, there are some surprising differences between humans and bees. The most important is that honeybees always have a shared common goal: the survival of the hive. People, in contrast, often work toward different goals.

But in situations where people’s interests match up – say, at a town council meeting or a committee – bees can be a model for how to behave.

A good first lesson is to place little emphasis on leaders. The scout bees’ opinions all count equally so there’s no risk that one bee will force the swarm into a poor decision. Too often, human leaders force bad choices on a group.

A second lesson is to always look for multiple solutions. Scout bees fly in different directions when looking for nest sites, maximizing the number of possibilities. In the same way, it’s good practice in any group situation to make sure all options are on the table before you commit.

Third, consider using the bees’ approach to decision-making. If a group needs a good decision, not necessarily a perfect one, it’s sometimes worth pressing ahead once it’s clear an idea will definitely work – even if it doesn’t have universal approval. Just like the scout bees do when initiating the swarm’s move to a new home.

The fourth and final lesson is to let people build knowledge independently. Giving people the space to form their own opinions leads to healthier, better-informed debates. Scout bees always perform independent evaluations of possible sites – so that, given enough bees, it’s highly likely that the best spot will get the most support.

The fascinating habits of honeybees, it seems, still have a lot to teach us.

"},{"id":"5fc0d6176cee070006c0f746","title":"Final summary","text":"

The key message in these blinks:

Every year, two-thirds of the honeybees in a swarm will leave their home and spend a few days in a tree. Meanwhile, an intrepid group of scout bees will conduct a thorough evaluation of potential new homes in the vicinity. The careful and effective process that honeybees have evolved enables them to almost always make the right choice – and it’s a process that could serve as a model for good decision-making to us all.

Got feedback?

We’d love to hear what you think about our content! Just drop an email to remember@blinkist.com with Honeybee Democracy as the subject line and share your thoughts!

What to read next: Underbug, by Lisa Margonelli

Honeybee Democracy is a fascinating study of how a large number of bees come together as one to make a complex decision. But bees aren’t the only insects that have evolved spectacular collaborative skills. Try our blinks to Underbug and uncover the enthralling world of the termite – an insect that humans may like less than bees, but that’s no less innovative and interesting. Whether you’re a technologist or an architect, you could almost certainly learn a thing or two from termites.

"}]}

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