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
on Aug 6, 2003 -
5 comments
How would it be to be a bee? Einstein has been quoted as saying that if the bee were to suddenly disappear, mankind would survive only another four years. So, make a bow to your insect overlords, and visit this site by a neuroscientist researching bee vision to experience first-hand
how a bee sees. The B-EYE software allows you to set various parameters to see how a bee would view selected images, including
Einstein himself. Or test your bee communication skills at Nova's "
Dances with Bees" page, where you watch the dance of a hive mate and then try to locate the nectar source that he's mapping out. If you're still not impressed, consider that bees possess higher cognitive functions, including the ability for
abstract thought. Finally, find out why nice bees don't always finish last in a look at the
guerrilla tactics wielded against the dreaded "killer bee" by mild-mannered Cape honeybees.
