> Division of labor, nurse bees, queen piping, dance language ... The list is LONG.

And leading the charge is the esteemed Dr. Tom Seeley, with his latest "Honeybee Democracy".  But that doesn't even take the cake. However, this does: 

"Collective personalities in honeybee colonies are linked to colony fitness"
Margaret K. Wraya, Heather R. Mattila, Thomas D. Seeley
Animal Behaviour. Volume 81, Issue 3, March 2011, Pages 559–568

Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, is the hive as a model for computational systems:

"Hybridization of bee colony optimization and sequential quadratic programming for dynamic economic dispatch"
International Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems
Volume 44, Issue 1, January 2013, Pages 591–596

PLB

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