Boffins stalk house-hunting bees, find colony behaves kind of like a human brain

Wednesday 28th March 2018 10:28 GMT Voland's right hand

Boffins at Sheffield University have discovered that colonies of honeybees follow the same laws as the human brain when making collective decisions.

For the research, published in Nature Scientific Reports, the team constructed a house-hunting model and treated a simulated bee colony

The simulation we created behaves as we have expected. QED. Bravo.

Ok, I am being unfair, not like there are any bees left to do proper research around Sheffield nowdays. The farmers have taken care of them along with bnutterflies, beetles and anything that flies except wasps (I think wasps would like to co-rule the Earth with the cockroaches after we do ourselves as species).

12 1 Reply
1. Wednesday 28th March 2018 11:40 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  I wouldn't want a bnutterfly flying around me either !
  
  14 0 Reply
2. Wednesday 28th March 2018 12:36 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  co-rule
  
  I think the roaches are more radiation-hardened so, if the Norks and Mercans decide to nuke each other I think the roaches will win out.
  
  I for one....
  
  5 0 Reply
  1. Thursday 29th March 2018 06:57 GMT jake
    
    Re: co-rule
    
    Not roaches. Tardigrades will inherit the earth, as any fule no.
    
    5 1 Reply
3. Wednesday 28th March 2018 15:50 GMT Doctor Syntax
  
  "Ok, I am being unfair, not like there are any bees left to do proper research around Sheffield nowdays."
  
  You are. There's a fair amount of Peak District not that far away. Sheffield used to pride itself on being one of the greenest cities in the UK until the council decided to start felling so many trees.
  
  4 0 Reply
Wednesday 28th March 2018 10:37 GMT Anonymous South African Coward

And the Borg? Will somebody study their hive mind?

6 0 Reply
Wednesday 28th March 2018 11:10 GMT Commswonk

More Research Funds, Please...

Clearly a sting operation.

13 0 Reply
1. Wednesday 28th March 2018 11:41 GMT lglethal
  
  Re: More Research Funds, Please...
  
  Beehive yourself, Commswonk...
  
  7 0 Reply
  1. Wednesday 28th March 2018 11:53 GMT Commswonk
    
    Re: More Research Funds, Please...
    
    I wonder if this report is also being carried by Buzzfeed....
    
    7 0 Reply
    1. Wednesday 28th March 2018 12:12 GMT Crisp
      
      Re: A sting operation?
      
      Looks like a honey trap to me.
      
      7 0 Reply
      1. Thursday 29th March 2018 06:59 GMT jake
        
        Re: A sting operation?
        
        That's us commentards ... no time to brood, always waxing lyrical.
        
        2 1 Reply
Wednesday 28th March 2018 11:20 GMT frank ly

Unreported fact

Towards the end of the simulated runs, after being presented with many conficting choices and changes of parameters, the 'bee colony' suddenly stopped looking for new nest sites and built an extension onto their existing nest.

14 0 Reply
Wednesday 28th March 2018 13:20 GMT armyknife

Bee the Change in the Wold.

And do humans similarly scale in their collective decisions?

Brexit, Trump, etc? :chin scratch:

5 1 Reply
Wednesday 28th March 2018 16:08 GMT Ugotta B. Kiddingme

[SadlyNoddingHead]

"User interface designers will be familiar with the Hick-Hyman law as an argument for reducing complexity in design, before ignoring it and festooning their sites with a bewildering variety of options." [/SadlyNoddingHead]

4 0 Reply
1. Thursday 29th March 2018 13:02 GMT handleoclast
  
  Re: [SadlyNoddingHead]
  
  Damn, you got there before I could.
  
  Have an upvote anyway.
  
  Hmmm. Perhaps, one day, psychologists will add a variant of this and call is "Speed's Law." Along the lines of "Intelligence is the degree of brain complexity that allows one to deduce the best course of action and then invent reasons to do something else instead. Unintelligent creatures figure out the best course of action and then do it."
  
  2 0 Reply
2. Thursday 29th March 2018 16:06 GMT jake
  
  Re: [SadlyNoddingHead]
  
  For a perfect example, see systemd ...
  
  3 2 Reply
Wednesday 28th March 2018 16:52 GMT RandomUsername

There is a fascinating book on this subject called Honeybee Democracy where real bees were used in incredibly complicated real world experiments that comes to the broadly same conclusions.

Its infinitely easier to track the detailed and precise movements of individuals in a swarm of 20000 simulated bees than in a swarm of similar size with real bees but the researchers managed it with real bees.

4 0 Reply
1. Wednesday 28th March 2018 20:34 GMT Pascal Monett
  
  Yeah, but that funding has already been spent.
  
  1 1 Reply
Wednesday 28th March 2018 17:51 GMT englishr

Frank Herbert's "The Green Brain"

Reminds me of Frank Herbert's "The Green Brain" from the the mid 60's

I'm going to have to dig it out and re-read it now!

5 0 Reply
Thursday 29th March 2018 17:14 GMT EveryTime

I think that the humans are pattern matching a bit too much. You can anthropomorphize bee behavior, or claim they follow 'rules' that someone proclaimed, but that doesn't mean you actually understand their behavior.

A bee swarm actually prepares and leave the hive completely, settling on a nearby branch before scouting for a new location. They are heavily stuffed with food, so the initial move is around 10 meters. When you see a swarm, it's almost certain that the original hive is a few paces away. Not closer, and not much further.

Only at that point do they send scouts to look for a new location. If they can't find one, they are screwed. They can't return to the original hive as a group, and they can't live out in the open for more than a few days.

It's pretty much like a human eating everything they can from the fridge, telling off their roommates, and walking to the end of the drive before thinking about where they will sleep that night. Which is a fun way to describe the behavior, except it's not at all like that because bees aren't human. See my first point.

1 0 Reply