The optimal democratic lesson in bees

How to choose the fastest one right solution? An assertive person or democratic discussion? Biologists recommend that the bees be consulted.

A very interesting project by Thomas Seeley of Cornell University (USA) for studying how wild honey bees choose new accommodation to divide herds when the herd is too crowded, the old nest becomes tight chubby

The scientist said the bee has 'devised' a process that could be called 'optimal democratic process'. It is different from other democratic concepts in unusual simplicity, but very effective. That effect is reflected in finding the best location for the herd, while reducing the travel time to a minimum. In other words, they achieve the optimal ratio between results / costs.

Journey to find new "kingdom"

A swarm of 10,000 bees on Maine's Appledore Island has been marked and followed by scientists by camera.

First, the bees sent several hundred bees to scout out all directions to explore the appropriate location to build a new nest. Their 'selection criteria': the puffiness (hollow tree hollows on the body) are moderately large, south, the entrance has a section not exceeding 30 cm ² , not less than 2-3 m above the ground and volume those voids are not less than 20 liters. When they found the blossoms that seemed to meet this requirement, they stopped for a long time, flew back and forth, went inside to search carefully before flying back to the nest.

On the outside, a honeycomb seems chaotic, but it encompasses a democratic society - Photo: www.mediabistro.com

In her experiments, Seeley and co-authors Kirk Visscher, from the University of California, Riverside and Kevin Passino from Ohio State University have made artificial, wood-sized, set-up artificial puffiness. Different heights, mounted on big trees in the forest with different distances, to observe which 'models' are chosen by the bees.

When I find the most 'standard' blisters, the reconnaissance bees return to the nest and 'report' back to the bees in their 'language' as the directional and distance dances. where it found.

He shakes slightly from side to side, moving at the edges of an invisible square. The middle corner of the vertical line and this square indicates the angle of formation between the flight path to the target and the straight line facing the sun. The number of waving is the distance to the goal. Remember that it has long been deciphered by the bee's dance information (and with this discovery, three scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1973). Another move is to fly in figure 8. This action is repeated many times.

So normally, the bee informs each other where it is possible to find food and now uses the same way to show each other where the future nest can be built when dividing the herd.

From the knowledgeable dance to the votes of approval

For the first time, scientists observed these spoken dances in the 1960s, and recently Janet Riley, senior researcher at Rothamsted Research (UK), did experiments to prove that no only honey bees that other bees also have such language.

One of the experiments that researchers from BBSRC (Rothamsted Research) has done is to attach tiny broadcast devices to bees to track their movements and behavior.- Photo: Rothamsted Research

She pasted a tiny signal generator on the bee, observing the dances of the reconnaissance bees to find out how the worker bees can find the target. Although not all new soldiers succeed, not every bee finds its destination in a straight line, meaning the shortest path, but Riley realizes that dance instructions have sent bees. coming close enough (about 5-6 m away) where food is available, even in the case of high winds, from which they fly to the right food source with other instructions, that is the color and taste of Food sources (flowers).

When people put the bees that had just landed in the nest mouth to witness the bee's reconnaissance dance a long distance and then let go, these bees also flew in the same distance and direction as guided by dance, but all However, they did not find food because they did not know that their starting point was changed.

Let's go back to Seeley's research. So, the bees scouting the new site to divide the herd back to the old nest and start telling the other bees what they found and where they were. Although each scout 'defends' his search, the time of their dancing is precisely proportional to the 'quality' of the future residence, which qualifies the researcher. anticipated by the data they designed, corresponding to the size and direction of the puff they set.

Watching the scouting bees, the bees in the herd, including other scouting bees present but not sent, decided to fly to 'check in' at the scene. They split into many 'inspection teams', each coming to a place, but obviously, the largest number of members flew to the most appreciated location (ie the dance was shown with the longest time). .

The 'inspection teams' return and in turn express the 'rediscovered puffiness', trying to attract the attention of other bees in their direction. So gradually forming "alliances" in the dance to show certain options.

The reconnaissance bees regulate their 'swinging force', depending on the quality of the survey site.In this case, the reconnaissance bees find 2 potential locations to build a new nest, one is a big tree (on the left) and one is smaller but more satisfactory (right).Each bee returns to the nest (blue arrow) and dances (middle).The bees that scouted for the 'right' tree danced with a larger cycle (shown in red) than the bee that scouted the tree on the left (shown in blue).Three hours later, the number of bees scouting for the 'right' tree increased six-fold, while the number of bees that agreed to the tree on the left increased only three times.After another 3 hours, the reconnaissance bees support the 'right' plant that actually increased to eliminate the left tree from the competition.- Illustrations by Stephanie Freese, taken from americanscientist. org

This way of "voting yes" proceeds very quickly. It was no more than 16 hours that it was over for the bees to come to a major decision: to determine the location to divide the group, to create a new kingdom. Of course, it was not decided that the entire group agreed that the location was the best choice. But then, the researchers did not see any other comparison to reconsider the decision.

Simple as that. When the number of bees 'polling' for the new residence is 10 to 20 members, the bees waved their wings continuously, heating up their muscles to launch the journey. And when the temperature of the day was as high as it was needed, half of the bees escorted the queen to fly out of the nest, and the new queen made the move.

Thus the 'discussions' (based on the bee's scouting video) on a decentralized and competitive basis, do not take too much time - that is the basic feature of a mechanism. If you can find the best if not the best possible location, it is also close to the most ideal place in the shortest time.

This conclusion is published in American Scientist.