How democratic societies deal with external threats - But for BEES!!!
September 12, 2023 11:31 AM Subscribe
Thomas Seeley is the Horace White Professor Emeritus of Biology at Cornell, where he has been studying honeybees for 40 years. Initially he was interested in how a hive allocated its strongest foragers to the most productive foraging sites, but this has led into a general investigation into swarm intelligence and decision making, and how individual bees in a hive function similarly to neurons in a brain: "[...] even though each unit (bee or neuron) has limited information and limited intelligence, the group as a whole makes first-rate collective decisions."
Seeley's research on allocating foragers is summarized in his book The Wisdom Of The Hive (1995). Digging more deeply into the decision-making process, specifically on how a swarm of bees decides on a site for its next hive, led into his next book, Honeybee Democracy (2010). In this public lecture given in 2010, Seeley discusses the similarities between democratic processes and a hive or swarm's decision-making processes.
Recent colony mortality rates, however, have turned Seeley's attention from swarm intelligence to swarm survival - and his two most recent books, Following the Wild Bees (2016) and The Lives Of Bees (2019) have advocated a return to what Seeley calls "Darwinian beekeeping." (wapo link)
Seeley's current work, like that of many of his contemporaries, focuses on the lives of bees in the wild, not in captivity, and what the beekeeper can learn from the bees pursuing their natural state of existence rather than one in human-made hives, organized for human objectives (produce most honey and fertilize most crops) rather than bee objectives (create the healthiest hive with bee genetics selected to face threats rather than to produce honey). Seeley's YouTube channel consists of three lectures from 2020, on the topics of his recent work:
The Lives Of Bees, on what bees do when they're left to themselves in the wild.
Darwinian Beekeeping, on what home and hobbyist beekeepers can learn from wild bees.
Bee Hunting, on how to find bees in the wild.
Seeley's research on allocating foragers is summarized in his book The Wisdom Of The Hive (1995). Digging more deeply into the decision-making process, specifically on how a swarm of bees decides on a site for its next hive, led into his next book, Honeybee Democracy (2010). In this public lecture given in 2010, Seeley discusses the similarities between democratic processes and a hive or swarm's decision-making processes.
Recent colony mortality rates, however, have turned Seeley's attention from swarm intelligence to swarm survival - and his two most recent books, Following the Wild Bees (2016) and The Lives Of Bees (2019) have advocated a return to what Seeley calls "Darwinian beekeeping." (wapo link)
Seeley's current work, like that of many of his contemporaries, focuses on the lives of bees in the wild, not in captivity, and what the beekeeper can learn from the bees pursuing their natural state of existence rather than one in human-made hives, organized for human objectives (produce most honey and fertilize most crops) rather than bee objectives (create the healthiest hive with bee genetics selected to face threats rather than to produce honey). Seeley's YouTube channel consists of three lectures from 2020, on the topics of his recent work:
The Lives Of Bees, on what bees do when they're left to themselves in the wild.
Darwinian Beekeeping, on what home and hobbyist beekeepers can learn from wild bees.
Bee Hunting, on how to find bees in the wild.
even though each unit (bee or neuron) has limited information and limited intelligence, the group as a whole makes first-rate collective decisions.
if only modern Democracy worked this well!
posted by chavenet at 12:09 PM on September 12, 2023
Maybe we need to make more of our decisions by dancing.
posted by Gerald Bostock at 2:20 PM on September 12, 2023
posted by Gerald Bostock at 2:20 PM on September 12, 2023
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