Collective decisions and cognition in bees

P. Kirk Visscher () and Scott Camazine
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P. Kirk Visscher: University of California
Scott Camazine: Pennsylvania State University, State College

Nature, 1999, vol. 397, issue 6718, 400-400

Abstract: Abstract In a remarkable example of collective decision-making, swarms of honeybees, Apis mellifera, choose one of many nest sites discovered and reported by their scouts. At first, dancing scouts communicate the location of many sites, but within a few days all dances focus on the same high-quality site1,2,3. Instead of swarms acquiring global information by direct comparison of sites4, 5, we find that the swarm's decision arises through a self-organized process driven by the dynamics of interacting individuals following simple rules based on local information.

Date: 1999
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DOI: 10.1038/17047

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