Group Decision Making in Honey Bee Swarms
When 10,000 bees go house hunting, how do they cooperatively choose their new nesting site?
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When 10,000 bees go house hunting, how do they cooperatively choose their new nesting site?
A truly planetary politics would extend decisionmaking to animals, ecosystems, and potentially AI.
Experts found out that whenever a group of honeybees were taught to fly above a reservoir, they only can reach over to the adjacent end if the water has ripples or swirls.
In 1963, an Austrian entomologist named Herbert Heran and the German behavioral scientist, Martin Lindauer, noticed something peculiar in the way honeybees zoom through the air.
More Fun Than Fun: What Can We Learn from Insect Societies? 17/02/2021 Thomas D. Seeley learning from honey bees. Photo: Thomas Seeley. Many insects such as ants, bees, wasps and termites organise themselves into societies with division of labour, communication, conflict, cooperation and altruism. Insect societies resemble human societies in many ways and are arguably more efficient than ours in some ways. They sustainably harvest environmental resources, engineer their environments both inside and outside their nests, practice agriculture, fight disease with a combination of indiv...