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There’s an entertaining story about honeybees in today’s New York Times, “In Hive or Castle, Duty Without Power.” It’s extremely well written and makes an apt comparison between honeybee queens and Queen Elizabeth II of England. Duty without power indeed. Here’s a quote:

‘There is no top-down structure to honeybee society, no central command post or leaders with whips. Power is disseminated through the hive, and daily decisions about, say, whose turn it is to feed the larvae, take out the trash or fan the nectar into honey are made consensually and regionally, through a constant exchange of chemical, tactile and visual cues. “It’s a lot of local responses to local stimuli,” Dr. Robinson said. “Little things collectively give rise to decisions.”

As for the queen, she is so far from being a decisive potentate that she can seem goofily out of the loop. When a colony is ready to move to a new hive, for example, about three dozen scout bees appraise the local real estate, consult with one another and with other workers and finally, communally, settle on the best new spot. Come moving day, the queen has no idea where to go and must be shown the way.’

– Natalie Angier for the New York Times

I love the synthesis of honeybee biology with social observation. What better way to understand ourselves than by watching our sisters the bees?