The Five-Year Honey Plan is proceeding apace, comrade.

August 6, 2003 8:29 AM

If a young worker attempts to reproduce, she is spreadeagled by her fellows and kept immobilized for hours or even days. At the end of her sentence, the best she can hope for is a reduction in rank and loss of reproductive capability. Often she is mutilated or killed.

Fascinating article about police-state behavior in insects, complete with information on mutant anarchist worker bees, ant-led coups, and parasitic self-cloning bees. (via BoingBoing.)
posted by Vidiot (5 comments total)

posted by quonsar at 8:46 AM on August 6, 2003

Entymology is fascinating. If "survival of the fittest" means "leaving the greatest number of viable offspring" then there's no reason, necessarily, why a fascist society can't succeed. In droves.

Doesn't fascism relate, in it's root, to "tightly bound together?" Although it's become a bad word, it was right up there with Socialism, Communism, and Democracy as someone's idea of the best organizing principle for society. Rights of the individual? Collateral damage.
posted by scarabic at 8:49 AM on August 6, 2003

Fascinating. If there's one thing I've learned: Nature is weird man!
posted by woil at 9:58 AM on August 6, 2003

fascinating article, vidiot...I find bug behavior stuff pretty interesting, as long as it is not occurring in the confines of my home. Nature had a good show called The Alien Empire which I missed, but the site is cool.
posted by madamjujujive at 10:00 AM on August 6, 2003

I'm thinking about getting started with beekeeping next year, if I can secure a space to put the colonies. I think the behavior of bees is absolutely incredible.

Consider swarming, where the colony essentially mutinies, starves the queen to get her to flying weight, and departs in search of a new home, leaving behind a larvae queen and the young half of the colony.
posted by rocketman at 10:17 AM on August 6, 2003