>Discussion of Bee Biology,[log in to unmask],Internet writes:
>>selecting a home-site
Tim Sterrett wrote: ...>
>   ...   When a swarm decides to move from its cluster location to a new home,
>the bees are doing something ( making a group decision  ) that none of them
>have ever done before.  I watch this process with fascination.
 
Something remarkable is going on there!  Have you ever watched a clustered
swarm just before they take off for their new home?  They have some unique
behaviors.
 
The bees on the surface of the cluster get very agitated and frantic, and
many start doing a sort of "dance."  They shake and wiggle their way
rapidly over the surface of the swarm.  I'm not sure, but it could be that
those bees are scouts, and they are performing a dance on the swarm surface
to indicate the location of the home-site. (Anyone know?)  I think Dr. Tom
Seeley may have covered this.
 
Right before a swarm takes off from their intermediate cluster point (tree
branch or whatever,) I have seen the shaking behavior increase rapidly,
until almost all the bees on the swarm's outside are crazily shaking and
dancing all over the place.  I wonder if this behavior serves to
(literally) break the cluster, to get everybody airborne again.  As the
swarm starts to leave the branch, entire clumps of clustered bees will
often fall, and before they hit the ground they all take to the air,
joining their sisters in a huge swirling mass.
 
 Still, though, who leads?  Who follows?  Who's got the directions?  Which
scouts do they pay attention to, and which ones do they not?  You figure,
they may have a dozen potential home sites.  Yet they all find their way to
a "selected" one.
 
No less fascinating is the fact that once a swarm takes off and finds a new
cavity in which to live, the bees "forget" about the parent hive location.
 
If you try to move a hive or a bunch of supers some short distance from
their original location, though, your bees will return en masse to that
site.  They are locked onto that location.    Something mysterious happens
in swarm-bees that causes them to rearrange their whole "map" of home and
landmarks.  Their reference point is no longer their former address, but
the new site instead.  It's like they have immediate autonomy and a "clean
slate" once they are out of the parent hive from which they issued.
 
Any info appreciated on this stuff.       Many thanks,  JWG