The evolution of honey bee brains
u-tokyo.ac.jp
u-tokyo.ac.jp
Keeping bees has allowed me to learn more about my own species than any other single activity — that such complexity arises from seemingly-simple critters continues to boggle my fleshy little brain.
Instead of myself rambling on about apis mellifora, I'd rather just recommend reading one of the most incredible and technical (and beautiful) books ever: Dr. Seely's "HONEYBEE DEMOCRACY," which has a concluding chapter about the applications to robotics/neural.networks from having observed simple bees for decades.
Occasionally an individual member of the species "acts wrong" and is therefore destructive to the entire collective society — and typically these misbehaving parts of the patterns are sloughed off from the rest of the clan.
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Here’s the book synopsis in case anyone else is interested:
How honeybees make collective decisions―and what we can learn from this amazing democratic process
Honeybees make decisions collectively―and democratically. Every year, faced with the life-or-death problem of choosing and traveling to a new home, honeybees stake everything on a process that includes collective fact-finding, vigorous debate, and consensus building. In fact, as world-renowned animal behaviorist Thomas Seeley reveals, these incredible insects have much to teach us when it comes to collective wisdom and effective decision making. A remarkable and richly illustrated account of scientific discovery, Honeybee Democracy brings together, for the first time, decades of Seeley's pioneering research to tell the amazing story of house hunting and democratic debate among the honeybees.
In the late spring and early summer, as a bee colony becomes overcrowded, a third of the hive stays behind and rears a new queen, while a swarm of thousands departs with the old queen to produce a daughter colony. Seeley describes how these bees evaluate potential nest sites, advertise their discoveries to one another, engage in open deliberation, choose a final site, and navigate together―as a swirling cloud of bees―to their new home. Seeley investigates how evolution has honed the decision-making methods of honeybees over millions of years, and he considers similarities between the ways that bee swarms and primate brains process information. He concludes that what works well for bees can also work well for people: any decision-making group should consist of individuals with shared interests and mutual respect, a leader's influence should be minimized, debate should be relied upon, diverse solutions should be sought, and the majority should be counted on for a dependable resolution.
An impressive exploration of animal behavior, Honeybee Democracy shows that decision-making groups, whether honeybee or human, can be smarter than even the smartest individuals in them.
When reading this book, remember that bees have different "genetic fitness" than mammals; i.e. an individual female worker has greater chance of passing along "her" genes by raising her sisters [than her own children]. When a hive becomes queenless, is the scariest time for a hive — and you can hear it in their changed tones as the hive is alerted to Her absence.