Collective decisions and cognition in bees.

Abstract

In a remarkable example of collective decision-making, swarms of honeybees, Apis mellifera, choose one of many nest sites discovered and reported by their scouts. At first, dancing scouts communicate the location of many sites, but within a few days all dances focus on the same high-quality site. Instead of swarms acquiring global information by direct comparison of sites, , we find that the swarm's decision arises through a self-organized process driven by the dynamics of interacting individuals following simple rules based on local information.