Bees Vote to Keep the Hive Exactly as Warm as It Was

A colony of honeybees living in a straw hive at the bottom of a cottage garden has concluded its annual review of the temperature inside the hive and resolved, unanimously, to keep it at thirty-five degrees. This is the same figure the colony adopted at its previous review, and at every review before that, going back as far as anyone in the hive can remember, which, the bees point out, is not very far, since most of them are only a few weeks old.

The consultation was extensive. Workers on the outer comb argued the case for more warmth by shivering their flight muscles, while workers near the entrance made the opposing case by fanning their wings. The debate ran continuously, day and night, without a chair or an agenda, and produced a settled result accurate to within about half a degree. No vote was counted, because no vote was held. The colony describes its method as everybody doing the obvious thing until the obvious thing stops being necessary.

A small delegation was observed advocating thirty-six degrees. It was not overruled so much as gradually out-fanned, and has since rejoined the majority without further comment. A single bee who proposed thirty-four was found to have simply been standing too close to the door. The beekeeper, who crouched beside the hive for most of the afternoon with a notebook, described the proceedings as the most efficient meeting he had attended all year.

The decision has been welcomed by the brood, the eggs and young bees developing in the centre of the comb, who were not consulted on the grounds that their position was already extremely well understood. The review will be held again tomorrow, and the day after, and every day after that, which the colony regards not as bureaucracy but as the entire job. Minutes will not be published, because the colony does not keep minutes. It keeps the temperature.

Behind the joke is one of the neatest pieces of teamwork in nature. A honeybee colony really does keep the part of the hive where the young are raised remarkably warm and steady, and it does so without any single bee in charge. When the hive is too cool, bees cluster together and generate heat with their flight muscles; when it is too warm, they fan air through the entrance. Thousands of tiny, local decisions add up to a temperature that any central heating system would envy.

So the next time a meeting runs long and gets nowhere, spare a thought for the bees. They never elect a leader, never take minutes and never adjourn, and yet they solve the same problem perfectly, every single day. Their secret seems to be that everyone pays attention to what is right in front of them and does something small about it. It is not a bad model, although the shivering is probably optional.