Thread by @berkun

1. While visiting my Mom in Florida, one day we came home and there was a bee swarm right outside her house. I’ve always been fascinated by insects, but bees in particular for how they #design things as a group. Here's a fascinating lesson.

2. Usually a swarm means there's a new queen looking to start a new hive and a bunch of worker-bees go w/ her (thus, the the swarm) - they're moving!

But in our case it was a bee-emergency. Their old hive fell out of a tree.

It was huge - the size of a large watermelon.

3. When they swarm, honey-bees have a fascinating system for relocation.

They send out 20-50 scout bees to find a new pad. They return and report (doing the wiggle dance) to explain what they found. Much like with people, there is a discussion of which one is best.

4. They wait until they have a quorum of 20-30 scouts (some don't make it back - scouting is dangerous!).

They discuss their options until there is a rough consensus (~80% agreement) on where to go.

Then the scout with the best location leads the swarm to their new home.

5. What's mind boggling to me is us humans struggle to do things like this - BEES HAVE BEEN DOING IT FOR MILLIONS OF YEARS.

The study of learning from nature is called #biomimicry - most problems of most kinds are solved in some fashion already in nature. We're just ignorant.

6. Sadly for this hive - because the nest fell, it was an emergency swarm. They couldn't store up 2 or 3 days of honey in preparation (which they usually do). And this late in the year it's hard to build a new hive.

So I don't think they made it :(

Credits: That first photo was from wikipedia, rest are mine.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarming_…

/FIN