Jerry Bromenshenk comments on Tom Seeley's recent writings:

> but his latest [...] - Honey Bee Democracy- may be the worst
> honey bee anthropomorphism I've encountered, in a discipline where
> anthropomorphism runs rampant.

I read that book and loved it.  What stuck in my mind was (a)
the incredible persistence and expertise required to collect data
for honey bee research, and (b) how "emergent properties" work,
where the relatively simple (but not coordinated) behaviour of a
large number of individuals results in colony behaviour which looks
intelligent, as though the individuals *had* been coordinating.

In fact, what I understood to be the whole point of his explanation
of the apparently "democratic" behaviour of the bees was that there
is in fact no "voting" at all, but rather that the scouting /
recruiting / extinguishing behaviours eventually result in a sort of
"quorum" (threshold number of bees evaluating a site), which trigger
those bees to "make a decision" on behalf of the hive, and to then
cause the clustered bees to take off and follow them to the site.

Now sure, calling the behaviours "advertising", "dancing", "recruiting",
"evaluating", "reaching a quorum", "deciding"...  I suppose one could
call that anthropomorphic.  But what would *you* call those behaviours?

Or is there some other aspect of the book that you found inappropriately
anthropomorphic, and if so what was it?  I'm happy to learn...


> Please, don't misconstrue my comments - I highly respect Tom Seeley
> and his work.

I'm blown away by someone who can essentially take the content of
several academic papers and turn that into a page-turner of a book.
That's a rare skill!


Anne, backyard beekeeper, Montreal.

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html