Bill Truesdell wrote:

> [Birds] learn from the adults until they master their species songs. No hard wiring and no instinct.

But they inherit the ability to sing and the capacity to learn: that
part is "instinct".

> why have bees (along with other species) stayed in the same rut for literally millions of years with no upward progression? So it must be instinct?

Well, there is progression from species to species. Apis florea has
one comb and dances on the top, pointing toward the food source. The
cavity nesting bees normally are in complete darkness and they dance
in a direction which is X degrees off vertical and *represents* that
many degrees left or right of the direction toward the sun. Some wasps
carry out simple buzz runs which serve to excite the colony. This buzz
run is also used by honey bees to excite a swarm in preparation for
departure.

> Using slow-motion analyses of video recordings, we made a detailed description of this signalling behaviour: a buzz-runner runs about the swarm cluster in great excitement, tracing out a crooked path, buzzing her wings in bursts, bulldozing between idle bees and periodically performing a conspicuous wiggling movement. It seems likely that the buzz-run signal is a ritualized form of a bee's take-off behaviour, with the wing buzzing greatly exaggerated and other behavioural elements (running, butting and wiggling) added to increase the signal's detectability.

> It turns out that the scout bees from the chosen nest site are responsible for producing both the piping signal to prime a swarm for take-off and the buzz-run signal to trigger the take-off. We suggest that these bees produce the signal that triggers take-off because they travel throughout the swarm cluster while piping and so are able to sense when the entire swarm is hot enough to take flight. The mechanisms mediating take-offs by honeybee swarms appear to present us with a rare instance where an action of a large social insect colony is controlled by a small set of individuals that actively monitor the global state of their colony and produce a signal triggering the colony's action in a timely way.

> Readiness for flight to the new home depends critically on all the bees in the swarm having a thoracic temperature of at least 35 C, which is needed for rapid flight. Indeed, it is not until 100% of the coolest, outermost bees in a swarm cluster have achieved this temperature that the swarm takes off. How can 'all' the bees in a swarm know when they are 'all' hot enough? One way would be to have some bees travel all about the cluster, census the temperatures of their swarm mates, integrate this information to determine the global temperature state of the swarm, and produce a departure signal when their polling has revealed that the required warmth has been achieved.

> It seems likely that this is how it works on swarms, for we now know that the scouts from the chosen site move quickly throughout the swarm cluster, with each one pausing every few seconds to press her thorax against another bee and produce the piping signal that stimulates warming. And, we now know that it is these same bees that strongly produce the buzz-run signal in the final few minutes before take-off, when all the bees are reaching the high body temperature required for departure.

-- 
The buzz-run: how honeybees signal 'Time to go!'
CLARE C. RITTSCHOF & THOMAS D. SEELEY (2008) ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR, 75,
189-197


PS
But the whole notion of progress is all in our own minds. Nature is
about successful adaptation. If a species is successful, no change is
required. If there are challenges to that species from the environment
(there usually are) such as climate, predators, disease, etc. then the
species may need to adapt over time by developing better defenses, by
getting smarter, faster, whatever is required. A species which buries
itself in mud may not seem very progressive to us, but it may outlast
us.

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