by Nina Burton
In one sense, bees are realists. Their senses are so attuned to nature that abstract shapes like triangles and squares mean nothing to them, so they don’t always notice such things. True, researchers once managed to teach them telling paintings by Picasso and Monet apart, just as had been done with pigeons. But it’s likely that what the bees saw were the differences between strong and weak lines, because that’s the sort of thing they typically notice in flowers.
In addition, the shapes of flowers and their scents are linked, since both of these traits are sensed through the antennae. When other bees brush past a dancing bee in the darkness of the hive, they also notice the scent of the flowers the dance is about. And that’s not all. The description of the flowers, and the path to them, affects them deeply. Round objects leave different impressions than angular ones, for soft and firm shapes have differing scent signatures. As a result, a landscape of shifting forms comes alive during the dance, giving shape to a three-dimensional world of the senses.
All in all, this is a fragrant and mathematical language, a marriage of poetry and land surveying. In mathematics all is clean and scaled back, abstract and exact, while in poetry so much is built upon sense associations and implied words. The unspoken gives rise to tension between the words, vibrating as in the relationship between the flowers and the bees. The bees’ dance is a complete and natural description that reaches from within the flowers to the winds and cardinal points of the landscape. All of this can be conveyed to others in a map that is both poetic and precise.
Above all, this is the story of a common world. If a single bee wishes to ask for help or give encouragement, she can do so straightaway, using particular scents or pheromones. Such immediate appeals have surely often been the beginnings of a language. So where does it go from there? Does language develop in a certain number of individuals, or in a common home? Or is language created by way of a shared task that involves something beyond the present moment, such as gathering honey? Maybe it’s all of this. In any case, bees have shown us one way in which a magnificent and unique language can arise.
The discovery of the language of bees was a sensation, and in 1973 von Frisch was awarded the Nobel Prize. He shared it with Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen, who had also studied animal behaviour. Biology had long been concerned with the determination of species, but now bees were no longer limited to insect collections. Their dance became part of linguistic theory as well.
It was revolutionary to find that insects were capable of complex communication, but it also brought up troubling questions. After all, we humans had long considered ourselves superior to other creatures thanks to our use of language. Did this mean that we weren’t the only higher-order species?
While von Frisch was researching the language of bees, the issue of advanced species had been thoroughly besmirched. Nazism’s division of humans into higher and lower races was contrary to both morality and reason, and had profound consequences. On the other hand, it was unsettling to discover that other species could be highly developed, however advanced their language might be. And so the issue was set aside.
In fact, though, this was when the situation truly began to deteriorate for bees. They were used to moving among wildflowers in a small-scale world of fields and ditches, but in the post-war period small family farms gave way to industrial agriculture with innumerable varieties of pesticide. Often, this brought unintended consequences – it might turn out, for example, that a fungicide multiplied the effects of an insecticide many times over. While pests quickly developed resistance to such treatments, the birds that kept their numbers down were poisoned. Bees were similarly affected. Even after DDT was banned from the market it lingered in the ground and could be found in the pollen gathered by bees.
People understood the value of bees, of course, so bees too began to be industrially farmed. These days, factories produce millions of bee colonies, and even bumblebees have become a commodity. They are needed to vibrate the pollen loose in greenhouses full of tomatoes and berries, so the bees are packed up in boxes and loaded on lorries for jostling journeys that can traverse continents. The enormous fields of monoculture provide a uniform diet seasoned with ever-novel pesticides, so perhaps it’s no wonder that the bees’ resistance has taken a nosedive. The intestinal parasite nosema has been joined by the horrific varroa mite, which is also spreading to wild bees, and the honeybees themselves are starting to have trouble finding their way back from foraging in the field. Even worse, the number of bees and bumblebees in Europe has fallen by 75 per cent, and 90 per cent of the bumblebees in the United States have vanished. If pollinating bees disappear we will face disaster.
Is it the fault of pesticides, monoculture or the toll of transport? Is the bees’ sense of orientation disturbed by cellular service towers, and is climate change a factor? Perhaps it’s a combination of all such things, for large-scale thinking doesn’t seem to be a good match for small-scale transmission of life.
Since there is less pesticide application in urban environments, people in some locations have installed beehives on roofs – indeed, even on cathedrals such as Notre-Dame. But above all, bumblebees and wild bees have fled to private lands where they now number greater than in the shrinking pasturelands. On small forested lots they can also avoid being forced to mate on an assembly line under the fluorescent lights of a factory, and can select their blossoming friends on their own terms.
Soon enough, the solitary bees in the door disappeared, which meant that they must have gone their separate ways after their romp in the spring sunshine. If they hadn’t developed a language of their own, like the honeybees, it must have been because they didn’t often need to share messages with others. Still, like all other bees, they naturally had their own inner world of flowers, foraging and memories. They seemed to have a good sense of the world around them; they always seemed to have a destination in mind when they flew out of the doorway casing. And they were excellent pollinators, even if they didn’t tell each other that the dandelions were blooming to the east. It was enough for them to have individual knowledge of the best flower locations.
In the case of the tree bumblebees, the first brood emerged in May. Since they hadn’t had much food to grow on, all of them seemed heart-wrenchingly tiny, but what they lacked in size they made up for in energy. A grassy path a metre wide led alongside the house and to the door, and as I was about to mow it with an electric lawnmower I’d inherited, an indignant little gang of guards came pelting out of the wall. I suppose the mower made their nest vibrate alarmingly, and apparently their territory extended all ways out.
Surely they’d had time to form their inner maps of that territory. Would I have recognised myself on them? After all, our senses were different. While we appreciated the same flowers, I couldn’t enter their landscape of faint or strong scents, which sometimes combined in harmony. Since scents were part of their way of communication, they also deposited their own odours on the flowers they lived with.
Our colour scales, too, were a bit different. They couldn’t see red, so their world was slightly tinted with blue, but then again, they could see ultraviolet, and in their eyes it formed glowing nectar patterns and lent daisies a bluish-green shimmer.
In general, we seemed to have a similar world view, even though they were a thousand times smaller than me. The fact that they could even recognise people sparked my admiration, because bumblebee researchers must attach tiny numbers to their subjects in order to tell individuals apart. Had I now been incorporated into a bumblebee brain? It was no larger than a grain of salt and yet could hold a map a kilometre wide, created by hundreds of thousands of nerve cells that registered the most minuscule variations in scent, sound and light. This was the very union of something close and something broad that poetry can attain. Perhaps I was actually searching for the perspective of the bumblebees? Due to a tiny scar in my right eye, I do in fact have the impression of a pair of insect wings constantly hove
ring in front of me, as if there is a tiny pilot there. The thought appealed to me.
There’s a hint of emotion in the bumblebee’s sensitivity, and it would come to be confirmed in experiments. It turns out that trapped bees can feel fear. If they’re not released, chemical substances can accumulate in their blood, causing them to die of panic. When, in other experiments, they were exposed to substantial shaking, they became apathetic. I could sincerely understand why being transported in crowded boxes on lorries went against their very nature. The researchers found that everything that happened to them could provoke agitation.
And eventually, half a century after the discovery of the honeybees’ advanced language, humans would have to admit that bees, too, have consciousness. In 2012, leading experts in neuroscience and cognitive research signed, with great fanfare, what they called the ‘Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness’. It was formulated in a scientific, matter-of-fact manner: ‘Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviours.’ We are, then, not alone in possessing everything it takes to have a consciousness. It is also found in other beings.
This was actually a greater revelation than the discovery of bee language. Consciousness had long been thought unique to humans, but here that assumption was roundly rejected. In the hunt for the physical source of consciousness, researchers travelled far back in time, all the way to the common ancestor of arthropods. She lived 540 million years ago and was probably the first conscious organism on the planet.
Naturally, a scientific explanation was offered at the same time. Each central nervous system must involve a brain of sorts, and in both vertebrates and insects it took the form of an enlarged ganglion. This organ processed and coordinated sensations, which allowed the creature to orient itself and learn from its experiences. Put simply, subjective experiences were crucial to surviving all the twists and turns of life. Any animal with a nervous system, then, could in theory experience things like fear, anger, security and intimacy.
I took my coffee cup from the bench, where a few buzzing little neighbours had just flown by. Perhaps they were on their sixth trip and their two thousandth flower. I would never know what went on in their millimetre-sized heads, but I knew better than to underestimate them. When tested, bumblebees proved themselves able to solve novel problems, such as how to remove a lid from a source of nectar, and they could learn quickly from one another. If they were rewarded with nectar they could even perform feats far beyond what was necessary in their usual lives; rolling large balls towards particular goals, for instance. I had read that one researcher, exposing bumblebees to a psychological test, ended up assigning them the same IQ as a gifted five-year-old. At first I nodded along in agreement, but then I began to wonder how well versed he truly was in their lives. IQ tests on animals are still performed in laboratories, far from their natural environments. So was the researcher even aware of bumblebees’ precise navigation and the way they made plans to visit different kinds of flowers when the nectar was most abundant? Did he understand that they could organise an entire little community; did he appreciate their general ability to survive a demanding life? If so, the five-year-old he was comparing them to must be a genius. And I wondered if any human could pass an IQ test created by bumblebees.
That evening when I went inside, I heard a humming in the south wall of the room. Was the bumblebees’ winged heating and air conditioning system in use, or was something else going on? Although they don’t dance in their nests, they do communicate. If they want to alert each other to any special flowers, they bring home a sample of nectar, and when the nest’s resources are fading they can use pheromones, urgent nudges and buzzing to prompt others to follow them to a few fruitful locations.
In any case, something intense was happening in the wall. Didn’t they ever rest? Their buzzing conversation lasted all evening, like a hovering tone right next to me. I would have loved to be included in their conversation, because I was fascinated by everything it might cover. During the summer the topics of birth and death, idyll and disaster would follow on each other’s heels like a miniature epic. And even though the nest was much smaller than a beehive, it still contained honey. It was thin as juice and difficult to store; it only needed to last for the summer. After that, of course, almost the entire bumblebee family would disappear. But still – inside my wall rested tiny pots of honey. Although they weren’t for me, they felt like a hidden treasure.
While the bumblebees were occupied in their flourishing pantry, I had an evening sandwich in the kitchen. There was, in fact, a jar of fluid honey in the cabinet. My sister, the gardening expert, had advised me to smear it on the damaged surface of a broken branch, and why not? After all, it was one of the world’s most nourishing substances, full of ingredients from the plant world.
As I dribbled a little honey on a piece of crispbread, it gathered in the many little holes. I was reminded of honeycombs, maybe because they were lingering in my thoughts. Something about the six-sided cells was still occupying my mind, and the associations extended to other walls as well. Even this very cottage had six sides, although they made the shape of a die.
When I was a child, evenings were often spent with board games. I was only moderately interested in the games, but since it was cosy to gather around them I was still happy to play. In fact, a small matriarchy sat around the table, in the form of my mother, her sister, my sister and me. The others had inherited my grandfather’s nearly mathematical love of games, and while they were absorbed in their moves I often let my thoughts wander. The die, for instance, was interesting. Although its six sides presented different values, each one could move the game forward. If I rolled a one or a two, I thought about the meaning in small things. With patience, even small steps could get you where you were going. When I rolled a three or a four, I thought about the mean. Perhaps there wasn’t much exciting there, but means form the framework of statistics and indicate something universal. A five meant many steps forward, and if I rolled a six, which let my piece fly ahead on the board and gave me a bonus roll, I thought of a tailwind. It was something you couldn’t control, and it could change suddenly. It was while playing these games, then, that I pondered life.
People have found five-thousand-year-old dice made of animal bones, so surely many before me have been fascinated by their construction. Each side has a unique value, and yet all of them complement one another. Add the sides opposite one another and you’ll always arrive at the same sum. One and six are seven; four and three are seven; five and two are seven. Seven is an odd number that recurs in many places. Man sailed the seven seas and the world had seven wonders; the rainbow has seven colours and the week, seven days. The virtues and deadly sins number seven. In nature, it seems that many birds are able to count to seven, so perhaps it’s a figure the brain can easily comprehend.
For honeybees, a die would probably have more visual associations. The dot of a one would remind them of the entrance to the hive, and the symmetrical rows of a six were not unlike the hexagonal cells of the honeycomb. But bees are also able to count to six – that’s how many times of the day they keep track of. More than that turned into always, which to them might encompass many different lives. The starting point was a lone queen, and from her a society grew. For bumblebees, life lasted over a summer, while in a beehive, thanks to the honey they’d gathered, life could go on even as the world became cold and barren.
Interplay can begin with being united around something seemingly simple. A die can suffice. In my family, our board games would later be supplemented with more artistic glass bead games, which also provided a gathering point. Music, dance and poetry too have traits of a uniting language. It seemed to me that some of this could also be found among the bees.
I took my honey crispbread out into the evening light, where life was humming with insect wings all
up and down the scale. Those tones could create melodies I was unable to hear since they came from different spots and from half-invisible bodies. But they were there. All I had to do was look and adapt to a different scale.
Chapter Three
The Ants on the Wall
It wasn’t hard to understand why bees were associated with a sun god. They move about in the light and nourish themselves with nectar, and their wings create music when they fly. They have a language of dancing symbols that links the insides of flowers with cardinal directions, and out of all this they create a substance from millions of condensed seconds of light. Everything about their lives is pure poetry. Like poets, they can be solitary or live in broader contexts, and they clearly demonstrate that each alternative has its advantages.
Their more distant relatives, however, have settled upon an extremely earthbound social life, no part of which suggests frivolity. They have no wings, no colours, no conversations with flowers, and no hair to which pollen can stick. They seldom go out alone for lengthy adventures, and instead of flying or dancing they march. Could I come to love them too? In any case, I had done my best to understand them.
I had, of course, noticed the ants during spring. When they awoke after their winter hibernation they were in great need of fortifying, and apparently birch sap wouldn’t cut it. From the opposite side of the cottage walls they managed to smell their way to the pantry, where they crawled down into an open carton of juice. I very nearly swallowed them. Later I found ants in the sugar, even though it was stored in a metal container. They really wanted to insert themselves everywhere.