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Of course, every bee wants credit for their own find. So there needs to be a countervailing costly mechanism to prevent bees from simply over-promoting any poll

Of course, every bee wants credit for their own find. So there needs to be a countervailing costly mechanism to prevent bees from simply over-promoting any pollen source they know. Two problems with this. Most importantly, if bees have the same genetic interests (it's a bit complicated but see The Selfish Gene for Dawkin's explanation of why bees are genetically programmed not to have different interests than their hives) then there is no reason for a bee to want credit. Second, has any reward for the scouts ever been observed?

gweinberg 11y ago
Right the article is a complete crock of shit. A bee does not benefit in any way from it being her find that the hive exploits. The bee in her dance is just trying to accurately convey the quality of her find, not to try to set policy based on her personal preferences, which scarcely even exist. Drawing an analogy between these bee dances and human voting is just mind boggling stupid.
- gus_massa 11y ago
  [I agree with the idea in your comment, but I think it can be written in a more polite language.]
rusanu 11y ago
Is also note worthy that the bees in the hive are in effect slaves of the queen, acting in the queen interest and not on their own. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_mandibular_pheromone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_mandibular_pheromone. As such the bees may evolve behavior that would not appear in a colony of truly independent "voters".
- gus_massa 11y ago
  The (female) workers bees are more related to their sisters than to their own daughter and sons ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplodiploidy#Relatedness_ratios_in_haplodiploidy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplodiploidy#Relatedness_ratio... ). So it's better to kidnap^H^H^H help her mother than to have their own children. The ratio of drones vs new queens is difficult to measure, because a new queen means that the colony splits, so the theoretical 3/4 is difficult to be corroborated. So, in spite of the hormonal details, it's more like the workers enslaved the queen than that the queen enslaved the workers. [The hormone is probably there only to signal that there is a queen, and it's not necessary to pass to the emergency mode and try to make a new queen.]
- orthecreedence 11y ago
  Attraction and slavery are very different. If I'm attracted to a human female via pheromones, am I her slave? Hardly. I would liken bees, ants, et al more to anarcho-communists than monarchists. Queen is a complete misnomer. It's just another job in the collective.

gweinberg 11y ago

Right the article is a complete crock of shit. A bee does not benefit in any way from it being her find that the hive exploits. The bee in her dance is just trying to accurately convey the quality of her find, not to try to set policy based on her personal preferences, which scarcely even exist. Drawing an analogy between these bee dances and human voting is just mind boggling stupid.

gus_massa 11y ago
[I agree with the idea in your comment, but I think it can be written in a more polite language.]

rusanu 11y ago

Is also note worthy that the bees in the hive are in effect slaves of the queen, acting in the queen interest and not on their own. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_mandibular_pheromone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_mandibular_pheromone. As such the bees may evolve behavior that would not appear in a colony of truly independent "voters".

gus_massa 11y ago
The (female) workers bees are more related to their sisters than to their own daughter and sons ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplodiploidy#Relatedness_ratios_in_haplodiploidy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplodiploidy#Relatedness_ratio... ). So it's better to kidnap^H^H^H help her mother than to have their own children. The ratio of drones vs new queens is difficult to measure, because a new queen means that the colony splits, so the theoretical 3/4 is difficult to be corroborated. So, in spite of the hormonal details, it's more like the workers enslaved the queen than that the queen enslaved the workers. [The hormone is probably there only to signal that there is a queen, and it's not necessary to pass to the emergency mode and try to make a new queen.]
orthecreedence 11y ago
Attraction and slavery are very different. If I'm attracted to a human female via pheromones, am I her slave? Hardly. I would liken bees, ants, et al more to anarcho-communists than monarchists. Queen is a complete misnomer. It's just another job in the collective.