Hi all

I don't think any of the human based metaphors apply to colony foraging. A colony consists of thousands of individuals applying simple instinctual routines to a constantly changing environment. It is an amazing system but does not really resemble a mammalian nervous system. Better to look at it for what it is, not for what "it's like."

> Because the discovery of a large and highly profitable food source can be communicated to nest-mates, scouting can be very advantageous even over distances as great as 10 km (Beekman & Ratnieks, 2000). More usually, however, food patches are rather small and difficult to locate, meaning that scouting is often a time-consuming and inefficient process. 

> It therefore seems important for a honey bee colony to retain information on food patches, even if these patches are not currently exploitable. If all foragers abandon food sources that were profitable but for which profitability decreased (as in the experiment), information on these food sources will be lost (unless individual bees have a memory in that they remember where they have been foraging without actually foraging on that patch; at this time, it is not clear to what extent bees have such memory). 

> If some bees persist in foraging on food sources despite their low profitability, information on these food sources is retained. Bees do not necessarily have to forage on poor food sources continuously but could sample them periodically thereby updating their information. 

Beekman, M., Oldroyd, B. P., & Myerscough, M. R. (2003). Sticking to their choice–honey bee subfamilies abandon declining food sources at a slow but uniform rate. Ecological Entomology, 28(2), 233-238.

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