Check out the last three bullet-points in this article for some very pithy hints for our personal and business lives…hints from bees!
Reprinted from the Philadelphia Beekeepers Guild newsletter December 28, 2014
In his research on the decision-making process of honey bees in a swarm cluster, Tom
Seeley designed some exquisite experiments and carried them out with painstaking care and astute observation. Writing in Honeybee Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2010), Seeley examines how the older forager bees shift from food-collecting to house-hunting, employing the same “waggle dance” to communicate their findings to the neutral bees back at the resting swarm.
Individual house-hunters advertise the quality of separate potential new nesting sites by the “enthusiasm” of their dance across the surface of the swarm cluster. A dance containing a great number of the classic figure-eight circuits, causes a fair number of the neutral bees in the swarm to visit an ideal site. Make no mistake however; even a lackluster dance causes some neutral bees to visit a mediocre site.
Two critical phenomena then occur: 1) support for the ideal choice grows and 2) support for the mediocre choice decreases until it eventually expires. As a result, the community reaches “consensus” on the best course of action. As a body, they make the decision that will ultimately result in their survival. If they make the wrong decision, they will surely perish as a colony.
They rarely make a mistake.
What is their trick? Giving up the dance.
After dancing about her findings, the scout relies on the strength of her dance to recruit the neutral bees. Even if the she revisits her option, she only dances for it the first time. The neutral bees may explore the option themselves – or not – and return to the surface of the swarm to take up the dance – or not.
“Each listener makes an independent assessment of the proposal and decides whether to reject or accept it, and those that accept it may announce their own support for the proposal.” [Seeley]
It’s another of those subtle lessons from the bees, which we may learn to our advantage, if only we will observe the pattern:
- Know whether an option is worth dancing about at all. A dance for a dismal option wastes the community’s valuable time, as they hang vulnerable during the decision-making process.
- Know “how big” to dance for an option. A lack-luster dance for an ideal option spells doom for the community, just as surely as an enthusiastic dance for a mediocre option. To dance at just the right level, evaluate the option against the common goal of the community.
- Know when to give up the dance. Represent the option fairly, and then rely on the strength of your dance to recruit the neutral bees to action. The result will be the best outcome for the community as a whole.
