Scientists have discovered that honey bees are able to vote when making decisions about where the colony should create a new nest site. Female scout bees fly out to look for potential sites, and report back to the colony with a dance. Each scout’s dance tells the other bees how to fly to the site, this is done by the famous “waggle dance”, a figure dance that gives bees directions. And if a bee really likes the site, she will dance her directions over and over and over, literally hundreds of times. That way, more and more of her sister scouts see the dance, know where to go, and can fly off and check for themselves.
If the site is bad, the second wave of bees that go to check the place will do a “boring” 10-round dance. But if the site is spectacular, located high off the ground, narrow opening, facing the right direction, lots of honey storage space inside… then they will give a spectacular, 300-round dance, so more scouts will know where to go. If they like the site, pretty soon everybody will be doing the same dance.
