Chapter 4 2.1 The Way of Bees: Distributed Management

Beneath my office window, the hive quietly lets busy bees in and out.On a summer afternoon, the sun shines through the tree shadows against the beehives.The bees under the sunlight were like arc-shaped tracer bullets, making a buzzing sound, and burrowed into the small dark hole.Now, I watch as they bring home the last bits of nectar from the bearberry flowers for the year.Soon the rainy season will come and the bees will be hiding.I still look out the window while I write, and they continue to toil, but in the dark of their home.Only on clear days do I get lucky enough to see thousands of bees in the sun.

Over the years of beekeeping, I've personally moved bee colonies out of buildings and woods as a quick and inexpensive way to set up new hives at home.One fall a neighbor felled a hollow tree and I used a chainsaw to cut into the fallen old dogwood.The poor tree was full of cancerous beehives.The deeper you cut into the tree, the more bees you will find.The hole full of bees was as big as me.It was a gloomy, cool autumn day, and all the bees were at home, disturbed by my surgery at the moment.Finally I inserted my hand into the hive.So hot!At least ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit (36 degrees Celsius or so).A hive crowded with one hundred thousand cold-blooded bees has turned into a warm-blooded body.The heated honey flows like warm thin blood.I felt as if I had just put my hand into a dying animal.

The idea of ​​treating a hive of bees as an animal came a long time ago.The Greeks and Romans were both famous beekeepers.They harvested sizable quantities of honey from their homemade beehives, but despite this, almost everything these ancient peoples knew about bees was wrong.The reason for this is the secrecy of the bee's life, a secret guarded by tens of thousands of fanatical and loyal armed guards.Democritus believed that the hatching of bees is exactly the same as that of maggots.Xenophon identified the queen, but mistakenly gave her the duty of supervision, which she did not have.Aristotle has had good success in correcting misperceptions, including his precise observation of the "ruler of bees" placing larvae into the cells of the hive. (Actually, bees are first born as eggs, but he at least corrected Democritus’ misleading belief that bees start with maggots.) During the Renaissance, the female gene of the queen bee was proved, and the secret of beeswax secretion from the bees’ lower abdomen was discovered. .It wasn't until the advent of modern genetics that there was a clue that bee colonies were thoroughly matriarchal and sisterly: all bees, except for a few useless drones, were female sisters.The swarm was once as mysterious and unfathomable as the eclipse.

I've watched several solar eclipses, and I've watched bee swarms many times.I watch solar eclipses as scenery, not interested, mostly out of responsibility, because of their rarity and legend, more like participating in a National Day parade.But the swarm evokes a different kind of awe.I've seen bees swarming so many times that it drives me crazy, and every other witness. The swarm about to leave the hive is frantic, visibly restless at the entrance to the hive, and the loud humming and buzzing vibrates the neighborhood.The hive begins to spit out swarms of bees, as if to empty not only its stomach but its soul.The tiny sprites formed a tumultuous storm over the hive, and gradually grew into purposeful, living, opaque little black clouds.Amid the deafening din, the phantom slowly rose into the air, leaving behind an empty hive and a bewildering silence.In his eccentric Nine Lectures on Bees, German theosophist Rudolf Steiner wrote: "Just as the human soul separates from the human body... You can actually see the separation of the human soul through the flying swarm .”

For many years, Mark Thompson, a beekeeper in my area, has had a grotesque desire to build a cohabitation hive—a living home of bees that you can stick your head into and visit.Once, when he was working in the yard, a large swarm of bees suddenly spewed out from a beehive, "like flowing black lava, gradually dissolving, and then rising into the air." ft. black halo, UFO-like, six feet off the ground, just at eye level.The flickering black halo of insects began to drift slowly, remaining six feet above the ground.Mark finally has the chance to make his cohabitation hive dreams come true.

Mark didn't hesitate.He dropped his tool and quickly entered the swarm, his bald head immediately at the center of the bee whirlwind.He trotted across the yard in sync with the swarm.Wearing a bee halo, Mark jumps over fence after fence.Now he was running to keep up with the roaring animal, his head dangling in its belly.Together they crossed the road, quickly across an open field, and then he jumped a fence.He is tired, but the bees are not tired, they speed up.The man with the swarm slid down the hill and into a swamp.He and the bee buzzed and circled like a swamp devil, writhing in the miasma.Mark was shaking desperately in the mud, trying to keep his balance.At this time, the bee seems to have received some kind of signal and speeds up.They removed the halo from Mark's head, leaving him standing alone, wet, "panting, happy and stunned." The swarm remained at eye level, drifting across the ground like unleashed spirits, crossing the highway. Highway, disappearing into the dark pine forest.

"Where is the 'soul of the hive' . , who foresees the future...?" Now we can be sure that the ruler is not the Queen Bee.When the swarm emerges from the narrow opening in the front of the hive, the queen can only follow.The queen's daughter is responsible for choosing when and where the colony should settle down.Five or six unidentified worker bees scout ahead, checking tree holes and wall holes where hives may be placed.When they return, they report to the resting swarm with an agreed upon dance.In the report, the more exaggerated the scout's dance, the better the location she was advocating for use.Some of the leaders then check out several alternative locations based on the intensity of the dance, and agree by joining the scouts in a twirling dance.This leads more followers to inspect the prevailing candidate site, and then join the boisterous dance of like-minded scouts to express their choice when they return.

Except for scouts, very few bees explore more than one location.The bees see a message: "Go there, that's a nice place." They go and come back and dance and say, "Yes, that's a nice place." Through this repetition, the preferred location attracts more visitors. Visitors, and more visitors join in.According to the law of increasing returns, the more votes you get, the less opposition you get.Gradually, a large ensemble forms in a snowballing fashion, which dominates the finale of the dance.The largest swarm wins. This is an electoral hall of idiots, electing idiots by idiots, and the effect is astonishing.This is the essence of democracy, a thoroughly distributed governance.At the end of the song, the curtain is closed, and according to the choice of the people, the swarm, with the queen and the thunderous buzzing, is moving towards the goal determined by the mass election.The queen bee followed very humbly.If she could think, she might remember that she was nothing more than a village girl, a blood sister to the nanny who had been ordered (whose order?) to choose her.At first she was just an ordinary larva, then fed by her nanny on royal jelly, from Cinderella to Queen Bee.What kind of fate chose this larva to be the queen?And who chose the one who was in charge of the selection?

"It is chosen by the bees." William Morton Wheeler's answer answered people's doubts.William Morton Wheeler was a classical school ecologist and entomologist who pioneered the field of social insect research.In a bombshell essay written in 1911 ("The Ant Colony as Organism" in the Journal of Morphology), Wheeler asserted that, in every important and scientific sense, insect colonies are more than just Like an organism, it is an organism.He writes: "Like a cell or a person, it appears as a unitary whole, maintaining its identity in space against disintegration...neither a thing nor a concept, but a continuous wave surge or process."

This is a whole formed by the merger of 20,000 mobs.