Honey bees (Apis mellifera) use quorum sensing to make decisions about
new nest sites. Large colonies reproduce through a process called
budding, in which the queen leaves the hive with a portion of the
workers to form a new nest elsewhere. After leaving the nest, the
workers form a swarm that hangs from a branch or overhanging
structure. This swarm persists during the decision-making phase until
a new nest site is chosen.

The quorum sensing process in honey bees is similar to the method used
by Temnothorax ants in several ways. A small portion of the workers
leave the swarm to search out new nest sites, and each worker assesses
the quality of the cavity she finds. The worker then returns to the
swarm and recruits other workers to her cavity using the honey bee
waggle dance. However, instead of using a time delay, *the number of
dance repetitions* the worker performs is dependent on the quality of
the site.

Workers that found poor nests stop dancing sooner, and can therefore
be recruited to the better sites. Once the visitors to a new site
sense that a quorum number (usually 10 to 20 bees) has been reached,
they return to the swarm and begin using a new recruitment method
called piping. This vibration signal causes the swarm to take off and
fly to the new nest location. In an experimental test this
decision-making process enabled honey bee swarms to choose the best
nest site in four out of five trials.

Group Decision Making in Honey Bee Swarms
P. Kirk Visscher, Thomas Seeley, Kevin Passino

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