by Nina Burton
The childlessness of the bumblebee daughters isn’t that unusual, for most animals die without leaving behind any offspring. No, what’s worth considering is that helpful daughters at home can form the base upon which a society is built. In all their simplicity, they show that life isn’t necessarily ruled from above. These bees find that quite the opposite is true, and everything depends upon a humble sisterhood that might just resemble love.
Cooperation is at its most evident among the honeybees. Aristotle considered their system a positive example, although he preferred not to view it as a matriarchy – after all, bees were armed thanks to their stingers. Only under the microscopes of the 17th century did it become clear that the bees’ kings were really queens, and the idle drones were males. Still, the queen didn’t rule, so what was the source of the order that gathered them all into a nearly organic community? Was it the number of individuals, or something more mysterious?
In some remarkable way, a beehive unites two vastly different worlds. One is built upon community. By brushing against the queen, all bees receive substances that stimulate their instincts for care and building. Their bodies quite simply adapt to the various needs of the hive. The very youngest care for their larval-stage siblings, so they excrete a protein-rich glandular secretion the larvae can feed on. Their next task is to prepare the nectar other bees bring home, and at that time their bodies produce an enzyme needed for such a process. After a few more weeks, they will fly out to gather food, so they generate hormones that turn them into foraging bees. Their bodies already contain everything needed to help their thousands of sisters. The whole structure of the hive is tailor-made for the community, and all have developed in the same honeycombs.
With its six-sided walls, the honeycomb is a geometric wonder. The hexagon is the shape chemists use to demonstrate how the molecules of life are constructed by atoms, and how those very molecule figures go on to be combined into larger patterns. The six sides also have a practical advantage in a honeycomb. Since each cell shares its walls with neighbours, this structure uses the minimal amount of material and its weight is spread out evenly. The bees that build honeycombs seem to understand this. They don’t reinforce only the weak sections; they strengthen other parts at the same time. The cells must be sturdy, because the larvae that will develop inside them can grow to a thousand times their original weight.
So how did bees arrive at the hexagonal method of construction? The most remarkable fact is that the six walls arise on their own as the bees work cooperatively. Unlike the wax pots of bumblebees, the cells are not built one at a time, but by a number of bees moulding their wax all at once. They work so close together that the wax around each bee melts with the heat and is united with that of the neighbouring worker. Because they keep a certain distance from one another, they end up with six walls of equal size. The honeycomb perfectly illustrates the cooperation within a hive.
But the cells inside will be filled with more than just new siblings. They must also store something that is gathered outside the hive, and in order to search for it each bee must fly out on its own, into a world that is wildly different from the regimented environment inside the hive. Where the hive is crowded, dark and systematic, the world outside is boundless, bright and ever-changing. How can they possibly find their way?
Like bumblebees, honeybees can recognise their surroundings as long as they’re within about a hundred metres of the hive. Beyond that, they must navigate at an intersection of time and space. They tell time by the sun, following a kind of sundial where time is connected to different tours among flowers. Even back in the hive they will have studied it by way of a narrow beam of polarised light, and from this they learn to differentiate between six points of time in one day. More than that is always. But they also understand the time when no nectar or pollen can be collected, which can lead to starvation – the nothing that can pose a threat to all life in the hive.
Then their sense of time must be combined with the landmarks of their territory and the clues from their senses, and that takes flexibility. Wind and weather change constantly, and vegetation can change by the week. At the same time, they maintain a running dialogue with their sisters in the hive, because if their common resources run short they must turn to flowers that offer less pollen. In the midst of constant development, they must recognise various flower species, know which are giving the most pollen at the moment, and track them down. In other words, they must both learn from experience and make their own decisions.
The foragers’ harvest is collected inside the hive. There, nectar is prepared and pollen is sorted into different colours. There, too, the bees prepare a putty that will seal any cracks in the honeycombs and protect the nest. The materials are largely gathered from the resin-coated buds of broadleaved trees and the pitch of conifers, and it seems to be some sort of life essence. Among the hundreds of ingredients there are even traces of silver and gold. This putty can kill not only viruses and bacteria but also fungi, so if any intruder dies inside the hive it too is covered in the disinfectant material. This miraculous, hive-protecting substance is called propolis, which in Latin means ‘for the community’.
But the most important product of the hive is found elsewhere. It’s a sweet, golden substance that is collected in the wax cells and serves as insurance for the future. Honey. It runs a splendid gamut from white to amber to bronze, as the different flowers it’s made from determine its colour and aroma. Early summer honey is pale; in autumn it’s darker. Clover blossoms produce a mild flavour, lime blossoms a fresher one, and heather a more aromatic one.
Still, no flower can entirely describe honey, for like propolis it has hundreds of ingredients. In addition to vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, lactic bacteria, amino acids and formic acid, there are special enzymes added by bees. The nectar is brought into the hive by passing from mouth to mouth, so one sugar molecule touches any number of bees before it reaches the honeycomb. Thus, honey cannot be understood to result from any individual bee or flower. It’s born through an interplay of different species, individuals and times.
Is that why honey has always seemed to have a particular glow? It made its way into cave paintings and Babylonian texts. It was there in the Old Testament promise of a land of milk and honey, as well as in the Quranic vision of paradise. In Egypt, where bees were said to be tears of the sun god, honey was thought to bring long life. And it certainly was long-lived itself. Some honey found in a three-thousand-year-old Egyptian grave apparently remains edible.
The wax surrounding the honey seeped into human culture as well. It brought crayons to art and moulds to sculpture. Roman writing tablets used a beeswax layer; when warmed it could be made smooth again, ready for new words. Beeswax sealed ships against seawater and made clothing watertight. It also made the earplugs that saved Odysseus’ shipmates from the lure of siren song, and it anchored Icarus’ wings, although he forgot that wax melts if you get too close to the sun. The dark Earth, however, has been illuminated by beeswax candles for millennia.
The Berber language is said to have a special word for something that’s born when the sun touches a honeycomb. It’s like a symbolic image, but for what? Is it the essence of a thousand flowers and the many paths that lead to them?
When I pictured a honeycomb, it reminded me of the faceted eyes of bees, since those too have six-sided parts. Each section provides an angle of its own, and working in conjunction they help the bee find its way to a flower. The brain’s vision centre is made up of similar parts, although in that case they are nerve cells that allow the bee to see and react. Nine hundred thousand such nerve cells fit inside a tiny bee brain, all reaching out for one another, for even among cells it takes a joint effort to capture the signals of the world.
On every level, honey depends on cooperation. In three weeks, a single bee can only gather, at most, a quarter teaspoon of honey, and is then worn out. It takes two million flower-visits to fill a jar of honey.
/>
So why all this labour? Like the ancient Greek gods, bees really like nectar. They can even get drunk on it; when fermented, its alcohol content can reach 10 per cent. Intoxicated bees have even been studied in the hope of finding clues about alcohol abuse. What scientists discovered was that alcohol made bees bolder. Carl Linnaeus’s brother Samuel gave his bees wine mixed with honey to help them better fight off robber bees who were stealing their stash of pollen and nectar. On the other hand, sometimes tipsy bees can’t find their way back to the hive, and even if they did they would be turned away by guard bees who don’t hesitate to snip off the feet of notorious drunkards. The nectar isn’t meant to be an intoxicant. It is only intended to provide energy for gathering even more nectar and pollen. Eventually, it will all be transformed into something that spans time and space, and doing so requires cooperation, which in turn demands something more: communication.
Aristotle observed that bees dance, but it took another two thousand years before it was understood that the dance itself has meaning. In the mid-20th century, Karl von Frisch interpreted the dance and concluded that it was a complex language.
Von Frisch grew up in a Vienna buzzing with intellectual life. He came from a family full of professors who considered big questions to be natural, and after forming a string quartet with his brothers he also came to realise the importance of interplay.
But he wanted to communicate in multiple ways. He had a parrot for a companion. It liked to sit on his shoulder, bite at his pens and sleep next to his bed, and the first thing von Frisch did each morning was try to speak with his bird. He kept about a hundred other animals besides the parrot, so it seemed natural for him to study zoology.
He began by studying fish but gradually pivoted to bees. In both cases, his first discoveries had to do with the creatures’ senses. In the case of fish, the senses of taste and hearing seemed to be most important, while smell and colour were important for honeybees. They use scents to find their way to flowers, which they recognise once they’re close by their colours and shapes. A special attention is paid to the difference between firm and vague contours.
Von Frisch’s research team also noticed that bees have a vivid relationship with time. If they were regularly given sugar water at a certain hour, they would punctually show up at the very spot where they had been served. And it was clear that they had their own form of communication. Von Frisch was on the case.
But while his research advanced, human society was headed for one of its most major breakdowns. Nazism was spreading in Germany, heading for a world war and the annihilation of a people. Von Frisch was a professor at the University of Munich at the time, and he was so absorbed by his research that the events of the world outside mostly seemed like dull thunder in the background – until a swastika-stamped letter arrived at his institution. When he opened it, all he found inside was a brief message. He was a quarter Jewish, so he would be dismissed from his professorship.
It was a double blow. If he was forced out of the university, his research would be cut off just as it was about to reach a breakthrough. Cooperation was as important within his research group as it was among the bees, and several renowned colleagues pleaded for him to be allowed to stay, but it was all in vain.
Instead, the bees of Germany came to his rescue. They were being ravaged by hordes of the intestinal parasitic fungus nosema, which literally ate its way into the bees’ bodies. Twenty-five billion bees had already died.
Bees are a key species in ecology, and a large percentage of the human diet depends upon their pollination. Food shortages were already a problem in 1940s Germany due to the war, and now the situation grew more serious. At the same time, rumours were swirling that the Soviet Union was beginning to train bees to greater speed and efficiency. Shouldn’t the Reich be able to do the same? After all, bees were a shining example of citizens willing to make sacrifices for their society. From the Reich’s perspective, von Frisch’s research on bees’ language was uninteresting, but applied research that might lead to replenished food stores was urgent. Could von Frisch solve the parasite problem? His removal was postponed in the hope that he could, and in the meantime he was allowed to continue his other research.
It was a paradoxical situation. While decoding experts tried to figure out the enemy’s messages, von Frisch was searching for what was, in the best way, an unhostile inhuman language.
It takes time to learn new languages, not least when they’re in no way similar to the one you’ve already mastered. But gradually von Frisch and his colleagues managed to penetrate the communication of the hive.
First and foremost, it’s about flowers. The scents that tell of them are easily borne aloft, and they can also be understood by other species. The flower language of bees, however, is a sophisticated code that shares some traits with art.
It describes both the quality and quantity of the flowers’ nectar and pollen, as well as the path to reach them. All of this is danced out on the honeycombs in the hive, forming a map of symbols. Simple circles indicate nearby flowers; infinity signs mean flowers further away. The length of the dance denotes the distance to them or the time and energy the flight will demand. For instance, if the bees must fly into the wind, it will take more energy. The direction is shown by a centre line within the circle. If the messenger bee runs up the line, they should fly towards the sun, and if the bee runs down the course will be the opposite. If the dance moves diagonally and to the right, the direction of flight, likewise, should be to the right of the sun, at the same angle as the dance takes in relation to the vertical line.
Even the bee’s bobbing hind end gives information about the direction, travel time and flowers. The more zealously the bee sways, the better the nectar and pollen. At the same time, the flowers are compared to the hive’s existing resources. If food stores are slim, the dance includes paths to less bounteous flowers. Even though it’s all about distance, the dance is filigreed with detail.
It’s about riches that exist in light but is itself performed in darkness, so it must be understood through vibrations. The bee’s wing muscles tremble as it moves on the honeycomb; the wings are able to buzz at the same frequency as flight even when they’re folded. This provides additional information about the flight and at the same time creates yet another language. It’s like a Morse code consisting of vibrations with bursts of tone at a rate of thirty times per second, as well as pauses and shifting pitches. A dancing bee thus braids several languages together.
These languages are not just for describing a path to flowers. Should the hive get too warm, for instance, it needs to be cooled, so the bees must bring drops of water rather than nectar and pollen. When other bees move their wings above the water, they produce a sort of air conditioning. If they need a refill, the way to a water source can be described through dance.
The dance can even convey information about an entire environment. This is especially likely to occur during a swarm, when the old queen forms a new colony along with half the bees in the hive. Since bees are systematic creatures, scouts are sent out beforehand to have a look around the neighbourhood. Their reports back must include various factors. How big is the potential new home? Is it dry and free of other insects? Are there old honeycombs from past bee colonies? What does the entrance hole look like? How far is it to flowers and water? All of this must be described through the dance.
The volume of the cavity is so important that the scout bee might spend forty minutes methodically inspecting the walls. She continually checks the changing relationship between angles and can arrive at a mental cross section by remembering the distance between them. The position of the entrance hole is measured in the same way. It’s also crucial to have a water source nearby, but if it means flying across a lake the suggested location will be rejected by bees with local knowledge who can assess the situation.
Thus, at swarming time, the dance describes something entirely different from flowers.
What’s more, the description of the location and its surroundings must be exact, for many bees will have been out scouting and all their suggestions must be compared before one can be chosen. Still, it’s not exactly a competition, since all the bees allow themselves to be influenced and solicited by one another. In the end, the ones with the most support bring the whole swarm to the recommended spot.
Bees, then, have had a functioning democracy since before the Greeks even created the word for it. No one and everyone makes the decisions in a bee society – a far cry from the king that was once imagined to rule a hive. Bee communication is, in fact, a type of dialogue, since the scouts need an active audience, and only urgent questions are discussed. When the hive has everything it needs, there is no dancing. It isn’t meant as entertainment; it’s a tool to deal with the conditions of life.
Dances have arisen just about everywhere on Earth, with different purposes. They can be part of mating rituals or religious rites; they can create community or become an art form. Something of all this is evident in the dancing of bees. As in mating rituals there is a fertility aspect, and as in religious rites there is an enigmatic, unifying essence. There are definite steps to the choreography, but, as in folk dances and dialects, there can be local variations.
Above all, dancing is a well-refined language that suits the bees’ ability to interpret movements using every sense. While to me an insect’s flapping wings look like one big blur, the bees can see them moving up and down, even if they’re moving two hundred times per second. If you were to make a film for bees, twenty-four frames per second wouldn’t cut it. It would take ten times that rate to give them a sense of smooth motion.