Bees Behave Like Complex Brains

Honey bees must make decisions when more than one suitable site for a nest is found.


Summary: Scientists have discovered that when faced with the problem of where to live, honey bees will work together like a complex brain in arriving at a solution. P. Kirk Visscher of the U. of California, Riverside, and Thomas Seeley of Cornell U. have long been studying how the bees make their decisions and have reported their new findings in the Dec. 8 Science Express.


When it splits off from its mother colony, a bee swarm will go looking for a secure cavity in a tree or elsewhere that would make a good home. They communicate with each other by dancing. Usually, the swarm’s scout bees will find more than one promising site, thus forcing the swarm to make a decision. They must make a choice quickly before the swarm is exposed and the season for collecting honey has passed.


To advertise a nest site, a bee will run a figure eight pattern while waggling.  The angle of her body indicates the direction the other bees need to fly and the length of the waggling period  tells them the distance to the nest site.


Visscher, Seeley and colleagues say they have found an overlooked signal that helps bees arrive at their decisions.  Called a “stop signal,” a very short buzz delivered by a sender scout while butting her head against the dancer will shorten and end the dance. "It appears that the stop signals in bee swarms serve the same purpose as the inhibitory connections in the brains of monkeys deciding how to move their eyes in response to visual input," said Visscher, a professor of entomology.  These stop signals appear to be a message from a scout bee that the dancer should slow down because there is another nest site worthy of consideration. According to Visscher, this example of cross inhibition mirrors cross inhibition found in nervous systems.


Once a site attracts a quorum of scout bees, the other bees detect it and begin changing their signals. They produce a piping signal by vibrating their wing muscles while pressing down on another bee. That leads the swarm bees, which simply hang out while the decision-making process is progressing, to warm up in preparation for takeoff. The piping signal forces the stop signal to change into a “time to go” alert.  The scout bees will then lead the swam to the new nest site.


To read the entire article, click on SCIENCE DAILY.


Comment: Are you impressed?  Let’s list all the indications of intelligence these “lowly” bees  exhibit in arriving at their choice for a new nest. First they have to know what a suitable new home should look like. Then they must be able to do their clever dance that tells the other bees what direction to go to find the proposed new site and how far to go. Next the other bees must show they are able to interpret the dance correctly. They also have a system of signals including a stop signal and a piping signal. They show that they know enough to follow the scout bees to the new site which they have agreed upon should be their new home. In addition, they all somehow know their roles: queen, worker, drone, or scout.


Similar examples of built-in intelligence can be seen throughout all species. Perhaps most amazing of all though is that many scientists appear to be living in a state of denial by ignoring  the implications that some superior intelligence had to design these bees and provided them with all the knowledge to accomplish their feats. As we learn more and more about the world of living creatures, it is becoming harder and harder to understand how these examples of wisdom and intelligent design in animals can be dismissed by so many people as just being an illusion.


In writing about human intelligence, the philosopher Voltaire is quoted as saying, “We are intelligent beings: intelligent beings cannot have been formed by a crude, blind, insensible being: there is certainly some difference between the ideas of (the great scientist Isaac) Newton and the dung of a mule. Newton's intelligence, therefore, came from another intelligence.” More recently, computer magnate Bill Gates was reported to have marveled at DNA when he said, “DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.”  


We do indeed have a Creator with a wisdom that far surpasses our own. “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out” (Romans 11:33). May we use the wisdom given to us to see that we have sins which need to be forgiven but which are forgiven through the suffering and death on a cross of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Acceptance of this truth comes through study of God’s Word. “Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17) (2 Timothy 3:15).

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QUESTION OF THE DAY


Is steam from a hot shower good for your skin?


No. Hot baths and showers can strip the skin by wearing away natural oils.  It would be better to take a lukewarm shower and bath and limit them to five minutes.


Source: Dermatologist Dr. Jeannette Graf, quoted in Parade (December 4, 2011)


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