Making big decisions can be hard. Even after considering all options, doing research, and
selecting the best solution, there’s always a fear that you chose wrong.
To lessen that fear, a lot of us seek out advice from friends or even strangers on the
internet in the belief that two - or better yet, many - minds are better than just one.
This way of decision-making is like having a “hive mind,” where a large number of
individuals share their knowledge with each other which produces a collective intelligence.
This often leads to smarter decision-making among groups that is better than what one
individual could accomplish alone.
While often used in science fiction stories, hive minds actually do exist in real life.
There are lots of great examples of this in nature, but one stands out. And it comes from
the animal that inspired the phrase “hive mind” in the first place: bees.
These insects use nest-based communication to give their fellow bees important information,
and collectively make robust decisions. But their methods of communication aren’t what
you may expect.
Communication, or the passing of information from one individual to another, can take many
forms. Many animals, such as primates, whales, birds, and wolves, use sound to talk to one
another. Others, like many insects and even plants, use pheromones or chemicals to send
messages. But bees have developed a communication method that’s a little more peculiar.
They communicate via dance. And their dances can communicate to their peers the direction,
distance, and quality of food sources, the location of possible new hive sites, and sources
of nearby danger. And most surprisingly, they can even use their language to hold democratic
debates. This type of collective behavior is so powerful,
and the connection between the bees is so profound, that scientists are beginning to
understand that a bee colony acts a lot like a single organism - in fact, a lot like a
human brain.
And studying how these remarkable creatures interact could reveal answers about how our
own minds make decisions.
Although only about 10% of bee species are social, honeybees are very social indeed.
Apis mellifera, or the Western honey bee, is the most common of the 12 or so honey bee
species. They create large colonies with a single fertile queen, many non-reproductive
female workers, and a small number of fertile males. Individual colonies can house tens
of thousands of bees. And all of the activity carried out by these bees is organized by
complex communication between individuals.
In the early 1900s, scientists believed that bees might communicate the presence of nearby
food sources through scent - the fragrance of the flower adhering to the bees bodies
and alerting its peers of its nearby presence.
By this theory, the other bees should simply search in ever-expanding circles until they
discover the flowers with the memorized fragrance.
But in 1944, Karl von Frisch, a professor at the University of Munich made a discovery
that turned this assumption on its head - a discovery that would eventually win him the
Nobel Prize.
von Frisch noticed that after observing the returning scout bee, the other worker bees
did not search for flowers with a matching scent everywhere around the hive, but only
in the precise vicinity of where the foraging bee had been, even if that bee had been very
far away. Somehow, the exact location of the food source was being communicated by the
bees.
When von Frisch observed his bees more closely, he discovered that bees are constantly waggling,
running, and turning in circles inside the hive. He then realized that this performance
is a miniature reenactment of the bees’ recent flight outside the hive, indicating
the location of the food source it just visited.
Von Frisch had just discovered communication via dance.
And with it, foragers can share information about the direction and distance to patches
of flowers full of nectar and pollen with other members of the colony.
Their dance is called the waggle dance, and its main feature is the “waggle run,”
where they waggle back and forth while running in a straight line. The duration of the run
tells the other bees how far the resource is, where 1 second is equal to about 1000
meters. And the angle of their run, relative to a straight vertical line, tells the other
bees the angle of outward journey in relation to the sun. For example, if the dancing bee
walks 45 degrees to the right of the vertical line, the food source is 45 degrees to the
right of the position of the sun.
In addition to dancing, the bee also gives out some of the flower’s nectar to its audience
which, combined with the smell of the flower still lingering on the dancing bee help the
recruits locate the food source.
They communicate other things through dance as well. For instance, a “tremble dance,”
where they rock forward and backward and side to side, tells others that foragers have brought
so much nectar back to the hive that more bees are needed to process it into honey.
But not every bee conversation is about food sources, and not every piece of communication
is a one-way street, one bee communicating something to the rest. Bees can use these
same communication methods to discuss options about the future of the hive, and then make
decisions democratically - a type of collective behavior very rarely seen in the animal kingdom.
In late spring and early summer, honeybee colonies become overcrowded in their nesting
cavities. When this happens, it’s time for them to find a new home. One third of the
worker bees stay put and rear a new queen. And two thirds of the workers along with the
original queen begin the search for a new nest-site.
The quest starts with the swarm congregating on a temporary site - a branch, or a bush
outside the old hive. From here, scouts will go out and look for suitable nest sites - a
hollowed out tree, or an abandoned chimney or birdhouse. The bees are looking for a place
that will be protected from weather, predators, and is big enough for the new hive. Size is
perhaps the most important, since any colony occupying a hollow 10 liters or smaller can’t
store enough honey to make it through the winter.
Once a bee finds a location that it likes, it comes back to the group and does the waggle
dance, telling the others where the potential nest site is. Other bees then go check it
out for themselves. If these recruits like it, they’ll come back and do the same dance,
in the same direction. But it’s not always so clear which potential nest-site is the
best choice. And this is where a vigorous debate begins.
Here’s an example of how these debates typically go down, taken from one of the first studies
about bee debates in 1951.
On the first day, 2 nest-scout bees were identified and labeled. One bee reported a nest-site
candidate 1,500 meters to the north, while the other bee reported another site 300 meters
to the southeast. The next day, 11 new dancers were identified. 3 danced in support of the
site 1,500 meters to the north, 2 danced supporting the site 300 meters to the southeast, and
6 others danced about new sites all together. The next day, it rained, and only 2 new dancers
were recorded, one supporting the site to the north, and the other reported a new site,
400 meters to the southwest. The next day, many new sites were reported, but interestingly,
the site to the north was no longer being supported, perhaps because the rain leaked
into the site showing it was not such a good candidate after all. Over the next few days,
many sites were investigated and reported, but interest in most of them eventually faded.
Only one site, the one located 300 meters to the southeast, held the bees interest the
entire time. By the afternoon of the 4th day the bees dancing in support of the southeast
site completely dominated, with 61 bees dancing for it, and only 2 bees still holding out
for other sites. The next morning the decision was unanimous. The swarm then launched into
flight, flew 300 meters to the southeast, and took up residence in the wall of an abandoned
building.
By analyzing bee debates like this, the key features of the bee’s decision making process
becomes clear. The debate first starts with an information gathering phase, where many
alternatives are put on the table for discussion. The debate then progresses with all or almost
all the bees advocating for just one since, indicating that a consensus has been reached.
And during all of this, the process is highly distributed, involving dozens or even hundreds
of individuals - all the hallmarks of a democratic process.
The dances they perform are complex and indicate a lot of cognitive ability. The bees have
to remember the location of the resource or the nest-site, as well as the location of
the sun, and translate that information into the characteristics of the dance. The bees
in the audience then have to read this behavior and translate it into directions they will
then follow.
This, along with the coordinated decision to fly off in the same direction, at the same
time, supports the idea that a bee swarm acts as if it is one organism - a superorganism.
And recently, scientists have realized it’s even more profound than that. The way bees
work together is a lot like how the individual neurons in the human brain work together.
And studying their behavior may give insight into our own minds.
Psychophysical laws explain the relation between real world stimuli and the perception of those
stimuli. The brains of many organisms follow these laws, even quite simple ones.
Weber’s Law states that the change in a stimulus that will be just noticeable is a
constant ratio of the original stimulus.
For example, it might take 4 pounds before you notice your backpack getting heavier,
if your backpack was already loaded with heavy books.
Hick’s law says that the brain is slower to make decisions when the number of alternative
options increases.[9]
And Pieron's Law says that the brain is quicker to make decisions when the options to decide
from are of high quality.
These laws help relate the brain’s perception of reality to actual reality, and are important
when making decisions.. Many organisms adhere to these laws, even simple animals like fish
or insects. Fish, for example, can differentiate between a large school of fish and a small
one, opting to join the larger one, as long as the size difference was large enough for
them to be able to recognize it.
But do these laws only explain an individual’s brain and behavior? Could these laws also
apply to an entire colony of bees as one unit- the so-called ‘superorganism?’
In 2018, scientists started to get their answer. They analysed how quickly the colonies made
decisions between sites of varying qualities and compared the data with several psychophysics
laws to see how well the laws were adhered to.
And it turns out, the bee colony followed the laws closely. It followed Weber’s law,
in that the bees were able to choose the higher quality nest site, if and when the higher
quality, such as a larger size, exceeded the minimum noticeable difference.
They also found that the bee colony was slower to make decisions when the number of alternative
nest-sites increased, and that the colony was quicker to make a decision between two
high-quality nest-sites compared to two low-quality nest-sites.
Honeybee colonies adhere to the same laws as the brain when making collective decisions.
These finds give more support for the idea that bee colonies exist as superorganisms,
operating in the world much like a single, complete organism would.
And just as the bee colony is similar to a whole brain, the individual bee thus acts
like a single neuron. In the human brain, decisions are made when single nerves fire
waves of electrochemical signals. In bee colonies, decisions are made when individual bees communicate
their discoveries through a visual display to other bees.
And if bees follow the same laws as neurons, then observing them can lead to a better understanding
of our own minds - and more quickly too. Observing bee colonies is much easier than trying to
observe the neurons of a brain while a human makes a decision.
By understanding these parallels we can start to learn just how psychophysical laws work.
And with more data, bees could teach us how our entire psychology arises from a few chemical
actions from a few connected cells.
And outside understanding our own minds, computer scientists have created lots of different
algorithms based on bees decision-making methods.
One popular decision-making model is the Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm. It is used for
optimization problems, where users are looking for the best possible solution among many
different options.
In this model, each candidate solution is like a food source and the quality of that
solution is akin to the amount of nectar it holds. It begins with a number of employed
bees at each of the food sources. They then go out to neighboring food sources and compare
the amount of nectar to the previous source. They only remember the information of the
best food source they find.
After a certain number of steps, they share their information with onlooker bees who then
choose what they think is the best food source and sources that aren’t selected are abandoned.
This continues until the best food source, or solution, is identified.
This algorithm has been used to solve many real-world engineering problems across a variety
of fields. For instance, electrical engineers have used it to determine the optimal position
of solar panels for when they are in partial shade,[16] aerospace engineers have used it
to plan the re-entry trajectory of hypersonic vehicles, [17] and computer scientists have
used it to plan the path of robots, [18] proving the true power of the hive mind.
The intersection of biology and computer science is an exciting one, as the different ways
we can solve real world problems with solutions that nature has already made are basically
infinite. Algorithms are at the heart of this, and while they seem complicated, are easier
to wrap your head around than you might realize. If you’ve ever been put off by opaque coding
language, but really want to learn how algorithms work or even start making your own, you should
sign up for Brilliant.
Brilliant can help you learn how to program without having to dig through the weeds of
coding syntax through these fun, interactive challenges. You just shift around these blocks
of "pseudocode", and then you can get immediate feedback on your results. It's a good way
to understand how computer algorithms work, and then once you have that down, the coding
syntax becomes a lot less intimidating.
I don’t have a computer science background at all, but lately, it’s become more and
more important for me to understand it when making these videos, as it’s a topic that
keeps coming up. Brilliant’s Algorithm Fundamentals course has helped me learn that algorithms
really are just a set of instructions, and putting them together to get the computer
to do what you want is like a really fun puzzle. If you'd like to try out Brilliant for free
and get 20% off a year of STEM learning, click the link in the description down below or
visit Brilliant.org/RealScience.
As always thanks for watching, and if you are looking for something else to watch right
now, you can watch our previous video, the Insane Biology of Dragonflies, or Real Engineering’s
latest video that debunks a popular and mysterious image of airplanes that has been circulating
the internet for years.