Honeybee Democracy

Honeybee colonies, if successful, live over from year to year. To reproduce and at the same time prevent overcrowding they divide early in the summer. The old queen departs with close to half the workers - who knows how their allegiance is decided - to start a new colony. The well-provisioned hive is left to a newborn queen and her remaining retinue. The system serves to prevent inbreeding.

In one of its many remarkable features, the colony makes decisions collectively rather than by central authority. "Doing so certainly steers the bees clear of one of the greatest pitfalls to good group decision making: a dominating leader who advocates a particular outcome and thereby inhibits the group from taking a broad and deep look at its options."

His observations led Thomas Seeley in Honeybee Democracy (2010) to compare the collective decision making of a bee swarm to a New England town meeting. A significant difference, he says, is that the scouts in a bee swarm share a singular interest in choosing the best available homesite and reach their preference by building consensus, whereas the people in a town meeting often have conflicting interests (e.g., some do and some don't want to help fund the town library) and arrive at a decision in which the majority rules. For the bees it's a matter of coming to unity like a Quaker meeting by sharing information and opinions until the way opens for optimal satisfaction of the whole community.

A swarm of perhaps 10,000 honeybees, having left their hive
and clustered in a tree, prepares to decide on its new home
(Thomas Seeley photo)

As many as a few hundred scout bees range out over several miles from the swarm for the next day or two and return with reports on relocation possibilities, usually in tree hollows. They perform tail waggle dances on the surface of the swarm conveying their relative enthusiasm for a candidate, its direction and distance. Other scouts go out to have a look. The field of choices is gradually narrowed to a point of unity among them. Then, shortly after completing their selection process, the swarm bees implement their choice by taking flight en masse and flying straight to their new home.

Seeley's book provides insights into how all this is organized and communicated within the swarm. It's an adventure story not only regarding the subject bees, but for research pursuits of the most admirable imagination and tenacity.

Greg Morrow's swarm story

Last spring I saw drones very early on in the spring coming out of this hive. The hive was really tall and doing exceptionally well. It was so crazy to see drones that early in the spring. I had never seen them that early. But as soon as I saw them that early I thought, this is a hive that's going to swarm this summer.

Greg inspecting the swarm

That swarm was up on a branch. A friend of mine stopped by. He'd never seen anything like it. The bees were doing tail-waggle dances on the surface of the swarm. There were a lot of bees that were flying in and out of this hive. They were checking it out as scout bees.

All of a sudden we heard this roaring sound, which was the sound of the swarm taking off. We thought, they're leaving. We ran back to the meadow, and sure enough, they were now 50 feet above over our heads. The next thing I see is them drifting above the quarry. It looks like they're coming to the driveway, so quick, back to the driveway. We ran back.

I had built a hive. I made it as ideal as I could, even though I could have reached up and grabbed the swarm, cut the tree branch, shook the bees and tried to keep them back in the meadow. Sure  enough, this cloud of bees came over and within about a 10 foot radius around this hive there was a carpet of bees. Over the next 5 or 6 minutes they all marched up into that hive.

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We will see that the 1.5 kilograms (3 pounds) of bees in a honeybee swarm, just like the 1.5 kilograms (3 pounds) of neurons in a human brain, achieve their collective wisdom by organizing themselves in such a way that even though each individual has limited information and limited intelligence, the group as a whole makes first-rate collective decisions.

Thomas Seeley, from the Introduction to Honeybee Democracy

Social Bees

Some time ago I made a new friend at Halibut Point through a mutual fascination with the bees that roam there. He invited me to see the hive he manages at home. Even though Greg lives a couple of miles away it's perfectly possible that some of the honeybees foraging among the wildflowers at the Park were flying in from his location. We were entering the midsummer peak of pollen and nectar harvesting when meadows in particular were abloom. For the bees it was a critical time for provisioning their colony to survive the winter. The myriad foraging chores, and the maintenance of the hive, are performed by the female worker bees that vastly outnumber the males.

Greg plucking a drone from the doorway of the hive

A drone, or male bee

One of the remarkable features of honeybee society is its regulation of gender in coordination with the annual cycle of the colony. Males lack stingers and, apparently, any significant role other than fertilizing egg-laying queens. But to avoid the dangers of inbreeding they must only mate with queens from diverse genetic lines. This is accomplished at high altitude in faraway drone congregation areas where males from many hives await the arrival of queens who will partner with about 15 different drones to store a year's supply of sperm in her body for gradual use in conception even into the following spring. These congregation areas serve as regional sex central locations year after year although neither the newborn drones nor queens have been there before. How they find them is just one of the grand mysteries in the study of bees. The drones do have large eyes and vision superior to the worker bees.

Since they don't contribute to brooding chores or food storage drones are not born until the reproduction season and are evicted from the hive before winter. Not so the worker (female) majority that consolidate into a dense cluster during cold weather with the queen at their center and regulate the colony's temperature by isometric contraction of their flight muscles.

A foraging bee at shadtree flowers in early May,
its pollen baskets brimming and nectar internalized

Over the winter the colony consumes food stored in honeycombs to stay warm. Protein-rich pollen has been stockpiled for the maturation of a new generation of larvae that begin to hatch while the weather is still freezing outside. The great gamble is to maximize a worker population as early in the season as possible to replenish the hive so it can divide and replicate itself by launching a daughter colony with time for both to build sufficient brood and honey for successful over-wintering.

A forager with bulging abdomen (right)
passing nectar to a food-storer bee (left)
Photo from Tom Seeley, The Lives of Bees 2019

The photograph above portrays several of the honeybees' inborn capabilities. Within the darkness of the hive they construct a marvel of wax geometry for food storage and egg development. Here a stay-at-home housekeeper receives incoming nectar by inserting her tongue between the mouthparts of a forager who will regurgitate drops of the syrupy harvest.

 Among the fascinating subjects available to a modern reader is revelations about how honeybee foragers are able to direct their sisters to optimal nectar sources by conveying direction and distance through "tail waggle dances." The richness of the source seems to be described by the relative enthusiasm of the performance. And so a hive economizes on its collective efficiency in food gathering.

 It would be easy to think that the queen bee is somehow at the decision-making center of hive life, assigning specializations, controlling operations, evolving calendar responses. However the ingenious research of apiologists such as Tom Seeley (The Lives of Bees, 2019) has revealed that "a colony's queen in not the Royal Decider. Rather, she is the Royal Ovipositor. Each day she monotonously lays the 1,500 or so eggs needed to maintain her colony's workforce. She is oblivious of her colony's ever-changing labor needs...to which the colony's staff of worker bees steadily adapts itself." 

Bumblebee

Bumblebees are the other apian species to have evolved a complex social organization though less elaborately than honeybees. Most bumblebees do not live through the winter. The colonies perpetuate through fertilized hibernating queens that burrow underground, lower their metabolic rate, stop breathing and go into a torpor. We'll look at other distinctions between these types in a future posting.

Familiar Bees

Of the many thousands of species of bees in the world, dozens make their home at Halibut Point. The ones you're likely to come across belong to the family Apidae which are defined by their common trait of possessing long tongues useful in sipping flower nectar. Otherwise Apidae members often look quite different from each other. Some of them are 'social' in the sense that they organize themselves for cooperative living advantages by developing role specializations. As a generality it can be said that the Apidae family is unique among insects in its degree of achieving this evolutionary advance.

There are four other families of bees significantly represented at Halibut Point. You'll be forgiven for not examining their finer anatomical distinctions in the field.

Here is a way of looking at the local taxonomic groups of Apidae.

THE WESTERN HONEYBEE

Apis mellifera

Honeybees came originally from Europe as an important domestic food source. Many have formed their own colonies in the wild. Because of their ability to make and store large quantities of calorie-rich honey they are the only species capable of over-wintering in our climate as a community. Apis mellifera is the only species of honeybee in our area.

THE BUMBLEBEE GENUS

Bumblebees are endearingly recognized for their plump colorful patterns, fuzzy coats, and slow meanderings among wildflowers. Their communities are much more primitively organized than honeybees and capable of storing only a day or two supply of honey in their underground nests. Only well-provisioned queens survive the winter. These queens have been previously fertilized to renew the colony by bearing a new generation in the spring.

Bombus impatiens
Common Eastern Bumble Bee

Bombus perplexus
Perplexing Bumble Bee

Bombus terricola
Yellowbanded Bumble Bee

CUCKOO BEES

Within the Apidae one lineage Nomadinae has evolved the kleptoparasitic behavior of laying their eggs in the nests of other bees, reminiscent of cuckoo birds. Similar predatory species have developed independently within many other social families of bees‒a case of convergent evolution.

Nomadinae have a different physical appearance from other Apidae because they do not need pollen-collecting structures on their legs nor the associated body hairs. They have relatively thick and/or heavily sculptured exoskeletons  and saber-like mandibles. A female typically lays her eggs in cells provisioned by the host bee with food intended for offspring. When the cuckoo larva hatches it consumes this pollen ball, and, if the female kleptoparasite has not already done so, kills and eats the host larva.

Nomada maculata
Spotted Nomad

Nomada ruficornis
Typical Nomad Bees

CARPENTER BEES

Two genera are common in our area, Xylocopa (large Carpenter Bees) and Ceratina (Small Carpenter Bees.)

Xylocopa virginica
Eastern Carpenter Bee

Large Carpenter Bees look a great deal like Bumblebees except that their abdomens are hairless and shiny black. They have the unnerving habit of boring into wooden houses structures for nesting sites and hovering (harmlessly) around anyone who approaches. While gregarious they are not highly social in the sense of maintaining complex divisions of labor within a colony. They tunnel into dead wood by vibrating their bodies as they rasp their mandibles against it, discarding the bits of wood as yellowish sawdust or reusing particles to build partitions between brood cells.

Ceratina sp.
Small Carpenter Bees

Small Carpenter Bees are prolific pollinators among the wildflowers of Halibut Point, though not so commonly noticed because of their quarter-inch status. Their nesting is often solitary within the pith or stem of a shrub, as for the individual pictured above. Each egg is sealed within a cell provisioned with a pollen ball for the larva's consumption after hatching. 

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All these species of bees play important roles in the life cycle of plants at Halibut Point. Neither they nor the flora they pollinate would exist without the other. Native bees were doing this long before the honeybee arrived in Colonial times.

Family Matters

It's early June, National Procreation Month. Humans follow the pattern of nature, with a spike in wedding schedules and March babies. A good deal of coupling is happening in the bird world as well.

Green Herons

Hopefully their recent rendezvous in the verdure will lead to these Green Herons' successful proliferation as well as our summer-long entertainment at Halibut Point. We missed out last year, when only a single bird made an appearance, calling plaintively for companionship over several weeks, then disappearing.

Wild Turkeys

Some species start early and are already introducing their newborn chicks on stilts to survival skills in the local woodlands.

Common Eiders

Similarly, buoyant young eiders perhaps born on offshore islands are beginning to appear for tutelage on our rocky coast.

Cedar Waxwings

When a flock of about 50 Cedar Waxwings settled onto the crown of a tree the other day I inquired of Chris Leahy what it indicated about their familial intentions. Were others of their group brooding eggs elsewhere? He replied that "waxwings are a flocking species before and after the breeding season, but are not colonial nesters. Your birds have not mated yet but will pair off and do so. They nest here (with varying frequency), but become much less conspicuous during that period."

 Some of those pictured are likely to nest locally while some may go elsewhere. The important thing is that this emblematic bird keeps returning to Halibut Point State Park in all seasons.

Barn Swallows

There's been conspicuous activity by a pair of Barn Swallows at the Park Visitors Center, accompanied by the nuptial couple's commentaries to each other on various subjects.

They've been swooping in and out of a breezeway preparing their mud-crafted nest for a clutch of eggs.

In the course of this they are providing close-up views of their extraordinary plumage and flight maneuvers.

House Wren

A House Wren lining a tree cavity with suitable material is readying it for a nursery.

Baltimore Orioles

Baltimore Orioles are the most accomplished treetop nest weavers. They've chosen a spot where emergent foliage will spread a protective canopy over their domicile by the time fledglings come along.

Tree Swallows

Parenting presents demanding chores and responsibilities for all species.

Eastern Phoebe

Adults supply food until the juveniles grow to sufficient size and strength to begin taking care of themselves. Their development and lessons in proficiency continue beyond the cramped nesting quarters.

Green Heron with fish to carry home

As with every other aspect of bird life, reproduction is a script perfected over eons of time and passed down to successive generations. Each newborn is the beneficiary of these uncanny abilities and each is a potential innovator of beneficial refinements. It only works through a combination of individual and cooperative achievements‒family matters.

Reunion

Forty-some years ago our common admiration for birds - and a previously completed video project - brought me together with filmmaker Henry Ferrini to pitch an idea for a televised series on birdwatching. A third Gloucester resident, Mass Audubon naturalist and birding tour leader Chris Leahy, was key to the plan. We centered the pilot video in the Cambridge birding oasis Mount Auburn Cemetery during the height of the May warbler migration, with Chris casting camera-optimal bird enthusiasts of all ages, genders, and polish into the program. 

Fast forward to a recent communication from Henry: "May is for Warblers and given you are working with Chris Leahy, perhaps you should link to our “Birds” movie this month?  Have you ever posted it on your blog?" 

We all took a look at the grainy but charming video and decided to have a reunion at the Gloucester Writers Center that Henry founded in 2010 on the foundations of his poet laureate uncle Vincent Ferrini's creative vortex.

Birds video

It had been a grassroots, low tech, no-budget overture to the mainstream media modeling how we could help promote simultaneously both natural beauty and ecological awareness. In the early Eighties there weren't many such programs. We hoped doors would open to broadcast-quality equipment, special locations, and prominent people. The idea was to showcase a variety of different responses and experiences within the world of birding.

Magnolia Warbler, Halibut Point

One gentleman in the film summoned a memory from boyhood when, lying on his back, a Magnolia Warbler fluttered into the shrub above him and seemed to linger companionably. He borrowed his mother's opera glasses and ultimately acquired a field guide. A lifelong pleasure and obsession was born.

Birders refer to the warbler and its like as a 'spark bird.' "Back then," Chris notes, "birding was still something of an elitist hobby, not really a proper sport. As a kid I didn't dare mention that I was a birdwatcher. It hadn't broadened out to be something that everybody might want to do. Now it is virtually common knowledge that just going out in nature is good for your health, and the additional intellectual stimulation of solving bird identification problems adds to the value."

Northern Parula warbler, Halibut Point

As both scientist and global tour leader Chris tries to emphasize the natural history of birdlife. But underlying it all he acknowledges that "it's an emotional and aesthetic experience available virtually anywhere. You don't have to be in the Amazon Basin in order to appreciate birds."

Wilson's Warbler, Halibut Point

Increasingly we understand the remarkable capabilities of migratory birds, their interrelatedness to all life in their paths, their vulnerability to contemporary alterations of the planet. One thing that hasn't changed since the making of our film is Chris's summation. 

"It's the spectacle of the birds themselves; it's the excuse to go out in the wonderful places where you find them; it's the thrill of the chase. And there's something else‒something indefinable." Here he quotes a youngster with binoculars in the video: "It's awesome!"