"Thinking" bees.

[MandF]

I thought this would be a useful and interesting discussion to have.

There has been mention lots of times, by numerous members, of bees doing something or another, which suggests that they must be doing this in their own best interest. The classic example is putting mesh over a feed hole = bees will propolise it = bees do not "want" that space = we should cover the feed hole.

Now, I think there is a little too much anthropomorphism going on here, that we are granting too much intelligence to an insect (albeit fascinating).

My take on this is that insects are very simple animals, which act on simple stimuli, but can demonstrate fascinating behaviours as a result. It is tempting to assume they "think", but insects are not sentient, they are akin to complex computer programs, and/or, on/off, if/then.

They also make some catastrophic decisions, which will end up killing the colony. An example is that they will not seek to raise a new queen when there is a hive of laying workers, whatever trigger exists for them to raise a new queen is not there in such a hive.

We also know that most "decisions" in a hive are triggered by pheramones.

So, could it be that their decision to propolise mesh across a feed hole is based on a simple rule "if a gap < Xmm, seal it"? No "thinking" as to why they are doing it, or the consequences? This would explain why they also propolise frame lugs and every other tiny gap.

Could it be that they notice a drift of pheramones out of that area, therefore choose to seal it?

It could be that they notice heat loss, or a draught, or light, and it could also be, in this case, it *is* in the hives best interest, but I am interested what others think about this general idea of justifying beekeeping decisions based upon the bees natural instincts, which we do no necessarily understand, which are based on stimuli, not "thought" and sometimes which are not necessarily in their own best interests at all.

As I said, I am not trying to open up the feed hole debate, just using that as an example of our habit of ascribing sentient thought on an insect or superorganism (the colony as a whole).

 

[scuttlefish]

Welcome back MandF

My take on this is that insects are very simple animals, which act on simple stimuli, but can demonstrate fascinating behaviours as a result. It is tempting to assume they "think", but insects are not sentient, they are akin to complex computer programs, and/or, on/off, if/then.

I think you underestimate them and are assuming that sentience would resemble human thought (your anthropomorphism point again). Even human thought is akin to complex computer programs up to a certain level. One of the big differences between human and bee thought though would be the (apparent) lack of abstract thought on the part of bees - even in flying to a nectar source they have never seen before they are following a set of directions and making use of a mental map (actually, not dissimilar to us getting directions to go somewhere).

If you read Seeley's "Honeybee Democracy" and Gould & Gould's "Animal Architects" you'll see there's a highly developed - if contextually different - intelligence at work.

No, they're not going to engage us in debates on the finer points of Joyce or Derrida any time soon, but a lot of the context for our intelligence is the language we use. You need only look at how different bees' "language" is to ours to appreciate how different their way of thinking would be.

As to propolising cover holes - maybe they just close them up so as to have one single entrance into the hive and don't want other possible entrances. It could have nothing to do with ventilation - or everything.

They also make some catastrophic decisions, which will end up killing the colony.

Just like humans, then.

More interesting question would be - are bees capable of abstract thought, and if so what do they think about?

Do android bees dream of electric flowers?

 

[clv101]

My take on this is that insects are very simple animals, which act on simple stimuli, but can demonstrate fascinating behaviours as a result. It is tempting to assume they "think", but insects are not sentient, they are akin to complex computer programs, and/or, on/off, if/then.

I'd subscribe to this and it's not taking anything away from them. We know from the field of complexity science that simple rules can lead to massively complex emergent structure. Our classical training leads us to look for a plan, a design, 'someone' in charge when we see such complexity but it turns out often to just 'happen'.

I think much of the behaviour we observe in bees can be thought of as an emergent property of a large number of independent actors following relatively simple rules. This doesn't necessarily help us understand or predict what they are going to do though!

 

[Ely]

I thought this would be a useful and interesting discussion to have.

There has been mention lots of times, by numerous members, of bees doing something or another, which suggests that they must be doing this in their own best interest. The classic example is putting mesh over a feed hole = bees will propolise it = bees do not "want" that space = we should cover the feed hole.

Now, I think there is a little too much anthropomorphism going on here, that we are granting too much intelligence to an insect (albeit fascinating).

My take on this is that insects are very simple animals, which act on simple stimuli, but can demonstrate fascinating behaviours as a result. It is tempting to assume they "think", but insects are not sentient, they are akin to complex computer programs, and/or, on/off, if/then.

They also make some catastrophic decisions, which will end up killing the colony. An example is that they will not seek to raise a new queen when there is a hive of laying workers, whatever trigger exists for them to raise a new queen is not there in such a hive.

We also know that most "decisions" in a hive are triggered by pheramones.

So, could it be that their decision to propolise mesh across a feed hole is based on a simple rule "if a gap < Xmm, seal it"? No "thinking" as to why they are doing it, or the consequences? This would explain why they also propolise frame lugs and every other tiny gap.

Could it be that they notice a drift of pheramones out of that area, therefore choose to seal it?

It could be that they notice heat loss, or a draught, or light, and it could also be, in this case, it *is* in the hives best interest, but I am interested what others think about this general idea of justifying beekeeping decisions based upon the bees natural instincts, which we do no necessarily understand, which are based on stimuli, not "thought" and sometimes which are not necessarily in their own best interests at all.

As I said, I am not trying to open up the feed hole debate, just using that as an example of our habit of ascribing sentient thought on an insect or superorganism (the colony as a whole).

As much as I enjoy my bees and find them facinating, and take as much care as possibe ( for reasons that also satisfy my gain). I also find it impossible to believe they even know they are alive let alone have consious thoughts and individual decision making abilities. To me, they are purely instinctual.

I decided to keep bees as an interesting hobby that seemed more worth while than stamp collecting. I used to be an angler, until I just got fed up with it. I saw the same thing happening on angling forums. People over empathising with the fish as some people do with bees. Worrying about feelings, ethics, this, that, the bloody other. As soon as I open a hive to see how my colony is gearing towards my eventual honey crop, I leave all that crap and don't think about it. Beekeeping to me is entirely selfish and I make no excuses for it.

 

[Chris Luck]

I'm 100%, (well, maybe 99%) with Adam on this and incidentally, again not to reopen the debate, given time and no interference bees will usually completely block an open feed hole. I've seen it many time on abandoned, unmanaged hives. Equally, when behind window shutters they will seal all but their chosen entrance.

Chris

 

[MandF]

I'm 100%, (well, maybe 99%) with Adam on this and incidentally, again not to reopen the debate, given time and no interference bees will usually completely block an open feed hole. I've seen it many time on abandoned, unmanaged hives. Equally, when behind window shutters they will seal all but their chosen entrance.

Chris

Out of interest, do we know if their chosen entrance is always the original point of ingress? Or do they ever make an alternative "choice"?

Ie if bees entered a space on the top horizontal surface, and there was also a hole on the side, would they "choose" the one on the side?

This would show whether they did in fact have any preference for an entrance, or are simply programmed to have 1 entrance and block any other holes given the chance. No "thoughts" about ventilation/insulation or even the suitability of their current entrance... presumably that part is the work of the scout bees before they move to their new location!

 

[Chris Luck]

Firstly bees undoubtedly make mistakes, sometimes "in the wild" this is catastrophic such as choosing a cavity that is far too small for them, although this may be forced on them due to being unable to find something better, and of course if nowhere can be found they will make their colony hanging from the branch where they are.

Again "in the wild" in stone walls I've seen colonies with three or four entrances as far as 1.5 metres apart although what's going on inside I've no idea. I've also a hive with bees using the proper opening and one that is about a bee space wide half way up the BB which they could easily seal and haven't. One would assume that with a simple programmed response they would seal it. Same usually happens, but not always, if I put a wedge between a super and BB allowing bees to pass in and out.

In the case of bees between windows and shutters they tend to keep the final entrance points quite close to the comb which will normally be where they entered, but it's only a tendency and will sometimes be down below by the sill.

All of this is only my experience, others may have found differently.

Chris

 

[Ely]

Out of interest, do we know if their chosen entrance is always the original point of ingress? Or do they ever make an alternative "choice"?

Ie if bees entered a space on the top horizontal surface, and there was also a hole on the side, would they "choose" the one on the side?

This would show whether they did in fact have any preference for an entrance, or are simply programmed to have 1 entrance and block any other holes given the chance. No "thoughts" about ventilation/insulation or even the suitability of their current entrance... presumably that part is the work of the scout bees before they move to their new location!

I think when scout bees find a home for the swarm they will find somewhere with ideal conditions. Only one hole. As opposed to reparing their damaged home in an unmanaged colony

 

[scuttlefish]

I think when scout bees find a home for the swarm they will find somewhere with ideal conditions. Only one hole. As opposed to reparing their damaged home in an unmanaged colony

I think they'll choose the best home out of the ones they can find (Seeley, again) - satisfactory rather than always ideal.

If a strain of bees only accepted ideal homes then they'd have more swarm losses from not being able to find a home at all, and be out-bred in the population by swarms of strains that were willing (attributing consciousness to them again - my bias...) to accept homes that meet certain minimum standards (and then select the best available from those which do).

 

[oliver90owner]

I will add one comment to this thread (which is obviously inflammatory and an attempt to draw me into discussion, which I will resist after this post).

For all those thinking beeks out there, think on this.

Bees' ancestry has been traced back as much as 250million years in their development, from a form very much different than nowadays, but nevertheless a long, long time. Man on the other hand has been around about 30-70 thousand years and has placed bees in framed hives - yes, that is the subtle difference that this thread hasn't even remotely thought about - where the hive make-up precludes the natural brood nest formation of the colony, sorted out as the optimum by what we now understand as evolution, for about one hundred and fifty years. Work it out as any percentage of a reasonable time line and it will be totally negligible.

With that in context the rest becomes so clearly obvious. One hundred and fifty years against millions of years development. No contest really, when one thinks about it, is it?

Of course the bees do things in their best interests or they would have fallen foul of the now accepted Darwinian principles and have been superceded by a form of life better adapted to it's surroundings.

They don't have to think about it, it is built into their make-up from millions - yes millions of years of steady development - and is automatic. That does not alter the fact that those who are not sharp enough to accept that and think they 'know better' are sadly very much out of touch with reality.

Beekeeping is not 'natural', like most of nature, in any way, shape or form, whatever design a hive might take. It is human interference for human gain.

As usual any thinking beek would pick up on the rediculous analogies, but I will leave that for those, that think on it long enough and actually understand the real reasons, to come to their own conclusions. It should not take long.

Some might actually consider the real progress of man on this planet and how much the recent interference has actually really assisted or is assisting the development of the human race. One thing for instance is the birth rate and the increasing number of mouths to feed. The planet would have been a better place if the increase had been naturally limited.

In the long run, I would hope the bees are here long after this 'fleeting' moment of human interference, with their well adjusted lifestyle continuing, no longer interfered with by non-thinking beekeepers. Sadly, I think there will be so much more human interference with nature that in the end the toll will be severe, if not terminal.

What we need is thinking beekeepers, not thinking bees - the bees have been doing what they do best for many millions of years, without recourse to considering the detail. It has become so very abundantly clear over millenia.

 

[scuttlefish]

Some might actually consider the real progress of man on this planet and how much the recent interference has actually really assisted or is assisting the development of the human race. One thing for instance is the birth rate and the increasing number of mouths to feed. The planet would have been a better place if the increase had been naturally limited.

In the long run, I would hope the bees are here long after this 'fleeting' moment of human interference, with their well adjusted lifestyle continuing, no longer interfered with by non-thinking beekeepers. Sadly, I think there will be so much more human interference with nature that in the end the toll will be severe, if not terminal.

What we need is thinking beekeepers, not thinking bees - the bees have been doing what they do best for many millions of years, without recourse to considering the detail. It has become so very abundantly clear over millenia.

And I'd certainly agree with most of that - Malthus will be proved right eventually.

But the very nature of, say, an orientation flight involves - however minimal - a level of learning and information processing on the part of an individual bee that is at least in part more appropriately considered as thought than as automatic (even if the drive to take an orientation flight is itself automatic).

That said, I don't believe for one minute that they are making conscious decisions as to whether to forage, build comb, swarm etc.

 

[MandF]

So thinking about and discussing "thinking bees", we are unthinking beekeepers.

Interesting.

Also is the suggestion in the comment "no longer interfered with by non-thinking beekeepers" that 1. the bees care or suffer and 2. that either "thinking" beekeepers do not "interfere" with bees, or their interference is somehow morally better.

Of course, my position is that by trying to understand WHY bees do things, stripping away anthropomorphism, moralism, beekeeping tradition or fashion, helps the thinking beekeeper decide how they will proceed with their hobby. Whether that is for maximum honey yield, sustainability, entomological reasons, crop fertilisation or even keeping up with the joneses.

Noone who keeps bees, and therefore interferes with nature, can profess to take any moral high ground over another person who keeps bees. In my opinion.

Anyway, ball kicked, back to the point of the thread which is to try and understand what bees do and why they do it. As Adam says, bees will swarm to the best option available to them, so without some kind of control experiment, and knowledge of the criteria and loadings, it is difficult to say what an "ideal" hive would be. Bees inherently compromise, and have survived millennia doing so.

That isnt to say that bee husbandry isnt providing honeybees with much "better" hives than they would be getting if left alone to their own devices.

 

[scuttlefish]

so without some kind of control experiment, and knowledge of the criteria and loadings, it is difficult to say what an "ideal" hive would be.

Sorry to correct you, but Seeley (yet again? That guy's everywhere!) has done a lot of research on this over the years - an "ideal" hive from a scout bee's perspective is 40 litres in volume (around the same as a 10-frame Langstroth), south-facing, about 15 feet off the ground and with an entrance area of 1.5-2.0 square inches near the floor of the hive. Shape of the entrance and cavity are unimportant.

 

[oliver90owner]

That said, I don't believe for one minute that they are making conscious decisions as to whether to forage, build comb, swarm etc.

scuttlefish,

PM coming shortly.

 

[farbee]

I think Rab is correct here (although he puts it in his usual fashion ).

Bees have evolved to do what they do and this has lead to the behaviours we see. They certainly don't think 'there is a hole there I will keep us warm by filling it up'. But evolution will have selected behaviour that seals up the holes as this leads to better survival of the colony.

Simply natural selection.

 

[MandF]

But the very nature of, say, an orientation flight involves - however minimal - a level of learning and information processing on the part of an individual bee that is at least in part more appropriately considered as thought than as automatic (even if the drive to take an orientation flight is itself automatic).

I guess by "thought" I mean action/consquence thought, looking into the future and making a decision based on future outcomes, rather than some internal mechanism for rating a forage source, or potential new hive, or memorising the hive locale for navigation.

So, the hive doesnt feel it is a bit breezy (or cold or whatever) and think (or know) that if they block that gap (the feed hole) it will make it less breezy.

Why do bees propolise frame lugs? Do they think by doing so it will improve circulation? Or insulation? Or by doing so will make the hive more stable? I dont think they do it for that reason at all, I think it is more like they see any small gap in the hive as unncessary, and are programmed to block it up.

Now evolution might have bred that kind of bee, because in doing so their trees were more secure from damp, or wind, or ants, or meant the brood was less easy to smell from the ground, but again, afaik bees do not learn this behaviour or do this for any specific reason.

 

[MandF]

Sorry to correct you, but Seeley (yet again? That guy's everywhere!) has done a lot of research on this over the years - an "ideal" hive from a scout bee's perspective is 40 litres in volume (around the same as a 10-frame Langstroth), south-facing, about 15 feet off the ground and with an entrance area of 1.5-2.0 square inches near the floor of the hive. Shape of the entrance and cavity are unimportant.

Ah yes, I remember seeing this in relation to bait hives, what I was missing were the numbers. ie if you had 6 identical hives in terms of volume etc, but had entrances pointing in all directions, was the south facing entrance the ONLY hit, or was it just the preferred choice.

In other words, how important is it to the bees, given a choice? I accept the experiments would have shown a significant preference, but "significant" could be 5 swarms going for the "ideal" config, and 3 each of the other 5.

I do not know the answer, just asking the question

In my very (very!) limited experience, used brood comb seems to have more of a load factor over volume, height, entrance size and orientation.

 

[MandF]

I think Rab is correct here (although he puts it in his usual fashion ).

Bees have evolved to do what they do and this has lead to the behaviours we see. They certainly don't think 'there is a hole there I will keep us warm by filling it up'. But evolution will have selected behaviour that seals up the holes as this leads to better survival of the colony.

Simply natural selection.

I agree, but ask the question, what environment was this evolutionary trait established?

Is it relevant today?

When we go on a roller coaster ride we get an adrenaline rush. Why? Is it relevant?

edited to add: my view is that unless we understand WHY they have evolved a trait, we shouldnt just blindly accept, or assume, that it is still "for the best". As we have seen from Adam's post about entrance sizes, and other posts on here about how they treat entrances, and yet we feel it is perfectly ok to leave the whole entrance block out? Given a choice the bees would have a smaller entrance. Given a choice the bees would block a feed hole. Why is one choice seen as a critical, or demonstrates an unthinking beekeeper, and the other something we can ignore as and when we want with impunity?

 

[farbee]

but again, afaik bees do not learn this behaviour or do this for any specific reason.

Read up on how natural selection works and the answer will become clear.

 

[Alabamaeee]

What I want to know is why they do the "washboarding" exercise? I have observed one of my colonies doing that 3 or 4 times now.