Video: House-hunting bees behave like a brain
WHEN 20,000 bees need to find a new nest site, how do they scout out potential locations and decide where to set up home? The queen’s role is crucial to the life of the hive, but she’s no house hunter.
Instead, democratic decisions are made through a process using thousands of worker bees. The swarm is a superorganism, says Kevin Passino of Ohio State University, Columbus. It uses “group memory” to make collective decisions in a way that parallels how neurons…
