lecture 17

Question 1

honey bee swarm decision making process

Answer 1

• rapid exploration by scouts to locate many new nest cavities
• scouts evaluate cavities then perform waggle dances on swarm surface (then return to cavity and nest and repeat)
• # of dance repetitions in first set is related to quality of nest (more dancing = more recruits)
• when dances reach 0, forager resets and has no long term interest in same cavity (unlike humans)
• result: gradual decline in # of bees advertising inferior cavities and agreement on one best cavity
• quorum reached then all scouts detect best cavity has been found and worker piping informs all bees decision has been made