Honey Bee Social Evolution

Honey bees at work. Photo by Eric Tourneret. [o]

Honey Bee Social Evolution: Group Formation, Behaviour and Preeminence
by Keith S. Delaplane
Johns Hopkins University Press

Bees have been on earth far longer than humans, with the earliest fossilized specimens found in North America dated at around 14 million years old. Over time, these industrious insects have evolved sophisticated strategies for the survival of their species.

In Honey Bee Social Evolution, entomologist Keith Delaplane sets out to explore how the western honeybee Apis mellifera evolved into the complex species that exists today, and how a honey bee colony demonstrates that evolution is more than selfish "survival of the fittest," but equally a story of the success of cooperation and altruism.

The original material in this book began as a series of monthly articles in the American Bee Journal and expanded into a comprehensive guide on the subject. This results in passages which are sometimes overly technical for the non-specialist, but the clear presentation and summaries at the end of each chapter make it easier to navigate the wealth of information the book contains.

The females do not have their own offspring but take part in collectively rearing young possessing the same genes.

Delaplane argues that bees could have played a significant role in early human evolution, since rapid brain growth is fuelled by energy-rich foods such as honey, with its concentrated source of calories and protein. Chimpanzees and orangutans eat honey, so it’s reasonable to assume that primitive man would have done the same.

Demonstrating the long-standing relationship between humans and honey bees, the author shows how a Neolithic rock painting in Spain depicts a woman collecting honey from a hive, and how Ancient Egypt stone carvings dating from around 2,474 BCE reveal bee-keeping practices.

From the Greek philosopher Aristotle onwards, many writers have seen similarities between insect populations and human feudal society, both based on a hierarchical structure with a monarch and top-down organization.

Reproduction is the role of the queen bee, whose ovary-inhibiting pheromones prevent other females from reproducing. The females do not have their own offspring but take part in collectively rearing young possessing the same genes. This division of labour is a more efficient way of approaching the task. The honey bees also divide labour by age, with younger females taking charge of the nest and more mature females working as forage scouts. The scout bee, returning from new-found foraging grounds, waggles its abdomen to the left or right during a figure-of-eight dance, to convey the location of the site. Further information is added using signals from piping sounds. This distinctive system of communication is known as a waggle dance.

"Co-operation and conflict resolution are the central problems of sociobiology." [o]

“Distance to the resource is symbolized by the tempo of the dance, the number of waggles performed in a straight run, and the duration of piping noise the dancer makes,” explains Delaplane.

Further scouts are then sent out. If their estimation of the importance of the new foraging ground differs from the original scout, they will relay this information in their own dance, modifying the original instructions.  

A similar method is used to assess the suitability of new nesting sites. The move is initiated by scout bees which streak ahead to lead the swarm to the new location.

Bee colonies are an example of a “superorganism” which is defined as “an integrated biological entity whose fundamental units are themselves multicellular organisms.” The protection of the colony is paramount. A bee only stings as a last resort, since it will die soon afterwards.

EXCERPT from end of the chapter: Group Decision-Making (p. 281)

Honey bee nest selection during reproductive swarming is an example of consensus-making. Recruitment dances and other system components. such as piping, stop signals, streaking, and quorum thresholds can only be understood as adaptations to natural selection acting on the group. To the extent a component improves the colony’s survival over other colonies in its breeding population, there will be positive selection optimizing that component’s execution. Alongside such examples of positive selection, natural selection is also expected to favour cognitive pathways that preempt errors, conflicts and inefficiencies stemming from poor coordination among nest-mates. The solution seems to lie in natural selection favouring an optimum mix of interdependence and independence of appraisers.
    As an example, a recruit is interdependent in the sense that she is more likely to visit a site advertised by a previous scout. But she is motivated to amplify the advertisement only if she “agrees” on its quality. In this manner, errors are tamped down, a cascade of faulty information avoided, and the group arrives at more optimum decisions.

Co-operation and conflict resolution are the central problems of sociobiology and bees have addressed these problems in their social structure, as Delaplane points out: “the whole social enterprise rises or falls on the system’s ability to rein in selfishness.”

Using colony functions such as group decision-making as examples, he demonstrates that the continued success of a species doesn’t rely solely on survival of the fittest – it also involves co-operation and compromise.

As humans, our social skills and command of language can lead to co-operation on a large scale, creating communities and civilizations. But the salient question, posed by Delaplane in his concluding chapter, is whether humans can unite on a global scale to nurture the ecosystem and continue to live sustainably on earth alongside each other.

Honey bee queen surrounded by her court. Getty Images [o]

Amid the growing awareness of the decline in bee populations and the importance of pollinators in the food chain, the author hopes the book will have a broader appeal beyond the bee-keeping community, as he says in his introduction: “When it comes to hearing wonders of the natural world, there are many ready to listen both inside beekeeping and without. This book is for them.” ≈ç

ANGELA LORD is the Nature Editor of the Journal of the Wild Culture. Originally from South Yorkshire, England, she studied Modern Languages then gravitated print journalism as a news reporter and feature writer. She is now a freelance writer based in Surrey, UK.