Honeybee Democracy

Bees are incredible. Just a bunch of ladies hanging around flowers all day and making candy. Did you know when they fly they beat their wings at over 230 beats per second?

Thomas Seeley has spent a lifetime studying bees, and though his book also gives a good overall sense of how amazing bees are, it centres itself on one tiny facet of their behaviour—how they choose where to live. When bees need a new place to live, they form a swarm—a big bundle of bees which gather on a tree branch, or building, or other temporarily safe spot with their queen in the middle.

What they do next is fascinating, they send out scouts to look for suitable places to live. when these bees find a spot, they return to the swarm and perform a waggle dance for their peers. The angle and duration of their dance, similar to those they do to tell their hive-mates where to find sources of food, expresses both where the potential new hive is and also how suitable it would be to live it. Bees have a number of criteria for their abode, including the size (15 litres or more), size of the main opening (15cm square or less), height above ground (10-15 feet off the ground is best) and direction (Southward-facing if possible).

As the scouts return and perform their waggle dances, a sort of debate takes place. Competing spots are advertised, visited, and if found suitable, other bees will waggle dance in advocacy for them. Over a few days, the swarm slowly reaches a consensus, and eventually sets off for their new home.

This is the sort of book that could only be written by someone who has made their life studying bees. The author seems to be positively overflowing with the sort of deep knowledge that you only get after a lifetime of studying, and loving, something very specific. The book feels like it can barely contain all the author has to say on the subject—as if the author could have gone on for hundreds more pages on the subject. Paul Stamet’s Mycelium Running about all matter of funguses seems like a worthy comparison.

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