Reddit mentions of Honeybee Democracy

Ohhh! I know this!


TLDR: Bees communicate distance and heading in their dancing to food or in this case, an ideal new home. They hold a democratic process to determine the best site amongst the members of the hive. This ball you see is the mid-way journey in the move to a new location.



Bees actually have a fairly complex method of not only communication, but also a robust system of democratic decision making!

Many of you have heard that bees dance? But perhaps you do not know why. Bees communicate many things in dancing, but mostly how to find pollen, water or shelter (a new home). Scientists have studied bees and how they dance, and it turns out that by watching them enough, they can decipher their dances, a series of waggles and walking.


So say a bee found a field of pollen rich flowers, and comes back to the hive to tell the other bees where it is. They do this by dancing in front of the other bees in the hive:

In short, bees make figure 8 waggles - they shake their little bee-hinds and run in a figure-8 patterns cross the comb to communicate- and because their combs are oriented vertically, the angle at which the 8 is oriented off of vertical shows the direction in which the pollen (or destination is). Bees can coordinate this direction with their own internal “compass” and correlate it to the angle of the sun. Even though the suns angle changes as it rises or sets, the bees seem to be able to account for this based on their sycadian rhythm.

They can communicate distance by the duration of the waggle. Roughly 1 second of wings buzzing and body waggling equates to a distance of 1,000 meters! Quite some feat! Other bees (and scientists by observation) can actually watch this, decode it and find out almost exactly the location the bee is trying to communicate!

Bees also have the ability to scout and rate sites for new homes. Scientists observed and discovered this through building hundreds of hives with variables like sun exposure/ volume/ moisture/ distance entrance size etc. Older scout bees go out when the hive is growing big, or the queen is going to be displaced, and seek out candidates for new homes.

When the reach an area (just one area is sought out per bee initially ), they spend time flying around inside of it, and walking across all the surfaces doing measurements by counting steps / and time. They then do an internal rating of the suitability of their site they surveyed, and fly back to the hive! This actually is not a conscious decision (the rating) but something inherent:

“Finally, I should emphasize that almost certainly a scout bee does not consciously think through her evaluation of a site. Instead, she probably does so unconsciously with her nervous system integrating various sensory inputs relating to cavity size, entrance height, and the like, and generating within her a sense of the site’s overall goodness. It may be that finding a desirable tree cavity feels to a homeless scout bee as inherently pleasurable as feasting on a delicious meal does to a hungry human being.”


Since each scout bee only rates one location (there may be 30-50 scout bees), the dancing / democratic process can begin! The bee comes back and dances to communicate the location (and perhaps suitability) of their site. As they dance, they dance more excitedly the better the site! Ifs it’s an iffy site, they dance less fervently and may even eventually stop. If they dance excitedly, more and more bees catch on and take notice.

Here’s the democratic part; each other scout bee vegans to take a look at the dancing frenzy, and then if they like the dance, THEY GO OUT AND CHECK THE SITE THEMSELVES! They “verify” the rating! And when the come back, they begin dancing just a fervently if it is a good site! Eventually, this process repeats itself and it gets narrowed down to just 1 or 2 suitable sites! And this is not just random chance, in observations bees chose the correct site (ideal) 4/5 times!

So, after they choose the site through this process, these scout bees then begin signaling the other bees to store up honey. They run around over the hive and eventually signaling a sort of pre-flight. All the bees start beating their wings, suck up honey for the journey and begin the swarming process.

What you see on this picture is them In the middle of this process, resting around the queen. They will moving on shortly to their new home!

Please check out the book: Honeybee Democracy by Thomas D. Seeley

It’s an amazing book that goes into this process in detail, backed up by years of scientific experiments and observations!

Actually dude... Many species of ants and bees do vote.

The inner bees are holding onto the branch and the other bees are holding onto them. They actually cycle from the inner core to the outer mantle in order to maintain a constant temperature. You can learn all about the nitty-gritty details of swarms in Honeybee Democracy

> How do they decide where to live?

Bees vote in a democratic election process, and lobby others to vote with them (sometimes by literally butting heads with those who disagree).

For more, there's a whole book on how bees make decisions collectively.

On the off chance you or someone else reading this thread might be interested in knowing how swarming works, Tom Seeley's poorly-named book Honeybee Democracy is available on Amazon.

You seem to imply that the hives we use are bad. What makes you think that? Bees frequently pick the "artificial" hives we provide from all possibly choices. I know people who leave a box or two empty when on pollination contracts in case hives swarm and have caught bees many times that way. We also put out bait hives that regularly catch bees.

Bees will almost always pick the best hive in an area. Read Honey Bee Democracy by Tom Seeley for how I know this. Seeley has done extensive research what bees look for in a hive. Here are his reccomendations on bait hives to attract bees over other locations. Note as you read that that our hives and natural hollows both meet the requirements he determined that bees look for. The survival of a colony depends on picking the best location. If our hives were unacceptable in some fashion they would not pick them in house hunting situations.

• Modify: No how would you suggest modifying a hive (good or bad)? A box with an opening at the bottom and frames is a standard so equipment is interchangeable. Modifying a hive starts to break that.
  
  
• Paint: Light colors, thats because we put them in the sun and they overheat of they are dark. White is also traditional because it looks "clean" and back in the day of all local honey sales it was a marketing technique to have "clean" hives.
  
  
• Moving: as needed. Even as a hobbyist I move hives between 2 locations particularly when doing splits.
  
  
• Candy: I don't use bee candy. Sometime sugar water.
  
  Things that make beekeeping easier on bees:
  
  
• Don't open the hive so frequently for inspections. Obviously there are issues if you dont do inspections regularly.
  
• Put hives in some shade in summer. Can't do this in Florida Small Hive Beetles are a problem and shade seems to encourage them. This is also impractical for most agriculture purposes.
  
• Follow general guidelines on hives as much as possible concerning size (standard 8-10 frame with supers, or a equivalent internal size of other design), direction (south facing).

I went with Kenyan style top bar hives my first year because I really wanted to do frame-less. It worked out well for the most part but this year I'm adding two new Warre hives because I'm a huge advocate for letting the bees do there own thing and minimizing my intrusions. If you are not trying to maximize honey production, the Langstroth hive really has no advantages.

Honey harvesting is easy and you'll use the crush and strain method. I did a bunch yesterday and in 3 hours got about 1.5 gallons of honey plus about 1 pound of wax.

Make or buy your self a Top-Bar Hive Tool.

And read At the Hive Entrance. This is the best book ever for those who want to practice minimal intrusion bee keeping. Follow that up with Honeybee Democracy.

The Honeybee Democracy: Thomas Seeley is a really good option! I give it to my beekeeping friends.

Check out Thomas Seeley's book Honeybee Democracy. He's done some amazing things to decipher the whole process.

I am secretly hoping the beeks in NE Ohio get caught off guard too. I have nice, warm, happy, lemongrass-smelling swarm traps in trees just waiting!

Edit: Since there is some interest here about the design of the swarm trap, here are some details. I started with the D. Coates 5-frame nuc plan from BeeSource here and expanded it downward to make it about a 40 liter volume, which is the volume Seeley recommends in his book. This makes the large side pieces 18 inches deep. Instead of the entrance on the nuc plan, there are just a couple holes in the side of the box, which can be easily plugged up when I want to take the trap out of the tree and move it.

Edit 2: Added link to Seeley's book. It's a fascinating read for anyone interested in bees, or neural networks in decision making.

Definitely not. We use bees to pollinate crops.

I used to work in an apiary. Pollination is where the money is at, not honey. Incidentally, this is also where the most harm to bees is done. Again, not honey. It is stressful to hives to be shipped from state to state and many die in the process. Bees are often subjected to pesticides sprayed over the crops where they are stationed, leading to illness and colony collapse. But what are we supposed to do -- give up all the crops pollinated by bees?

The best way to help bees (and other innocent pollinators and animals!) is to advocate against widespread pesticide and herbicide use. I also find that supporting urban and local beekeeping helps raise awareness about the issues bees face. Further, if you ever get a bee colony in the wall or roof of your house, or somewhere similarly inconvenient, don't call an exterminator! Contact a local beekeeper. If the bees are docile enough, the beekeeper may be able to relocate and care for the hive.

Also, I've read a lot of books about bees, but this one is by far my favorite.

Most of my fave nature writers are British as I am British. Robbie Cowen's book Common Ground is a big fave and anything Richard Mabey writes is worth reading. Nature Cure deals specifically with how he dealt with a bad episode of depression. Gilbert White's Natural History of Selborne invented the whole concept of nature writing and is still an amazing read. (Selborne is not too far from where I live which helps). For something more scientific Honeybee Democracy is fascinating.

In terms of American writing Thoreau, Emerson and Leopold obviously and I love One Man's Wilderness too. Even some of Jack Kerouac's less well known books like Lonesome Traveller can be great.

I really want to get into nature writing from other parts of the world but I don't know where to start. Any recommendations?

Just leave them, they will move on.

Worth a read if you're curious about what they're doing: http://www.amazon.com/Honeybee-Democracy-Thomas-D-Seeley/dp/0691147213

I've been reading this book.

It has really great descriptions about of how bees make decisions within a hive and when swarming. The way they dance to convey coded information makes them act as a collective intelligence.

Ants are cool too! + Easier to keep.

I have yet to read it, but I've been told that Honeybee Democracy is an interesting read on how bees go about communicating where the new hive is.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691147213/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_Kr3iybDBY5XBY

These books are not about bee keeping but about be behaviour:

The Buzz about Bees: Biology of a Superorganism by Jürgen Tautz.

This book has amazing detail about bee behaviour, lifecycles, etc.

Honeybee Democracy by Thomas D. Seeley.

This book looks at the complex decision processes that hives use, particulary when swarming.