WHAT kind of social regime is in the honeybee colony?
Monarchy, Tyranny or Democracy?
Aristotle’s naturalism viewed the state as something prior to the individual. Naturalism is based on the correspondence between nature and society. The body is a whole and forms the Citadel (Polis), the individuals are just parts that make up the body. Man cannot live outside the Citadel, said Aristotle, because a man who don’t need the Citadel is either a beast or God. (Aristotle, Zoon Politikon)
Man has been inspired by nature since ancient times. Only in this way did he better understand human nature. I do not see why this analogy would not be perfectly valid in our case as well. From working with bees, I noticed that our society is very similar to the “administrative-political” organization of the beehive. I think there is no species more advanced in terms of social complexity than bees (possibly some species of ants).
From honeybee we learn that principle towards which our society tends to evolve. From family task sharing to super-specialization. And this super-specialization tends to the point that, a few thousand years ago, bees inhibited their sex glands to the detriment of the Queen. Not only the sex glands, but they also shared their tasks, some being nurses, others harvest bees, others guardians, depending on age they have and experience.
What kind of political regime exists in the bee family? Monarchy, Oligarchy, Democracy, Anarchy, Tyranny? But first we need an introduction.
The beehive can go through all the many challenges in one generation. From the harmony in the hive, to the anarchy in case they are left without the Queen and even to the fierce battles, revolutions, wars in the true sense of the word. But we will clarify these issues in the following articles if you want. Whoever doubts this organization in political terms, has only to ignore a few million years of progress, the solitary bee being among the first insects on Earth long before the primates, evolving same time with the flowers.
The beehive has only one Queen. It differs from other bees in size and laying fertilized eggs. Both the bee and the queen come from the same fertilized egg. This dispels the suspicion that bees are an inferior breed to the Queen. The difference between a bee and a queen is that the larval stage is fed differently. The queen is fed with royal gelly, which contains much more protein and nutrients than vitamins than the food of a bee larva which after the first three days consists of a combination of honey and pollen. Therefore, the Queen needs protein food, and more space to grow in the cell. When bees choose to make a queen, they build a much larger cell than a bee cell.
The queen comes out after a 16-day incubation, unlike 21 normal bees and 24 drones. On a sunny day, he goes out to mate. At mating, the law of natural selection works, only the strongest drones will mate with the Queen. The queen returns to the family, where only then is she recognized as the Queen with full rights. From the moment of mating, as a ceremonial, the Queen is crowned. She will make the law, she will have guard bees and feeding bees. The guard bees will make room for her among the other bees, and the feeding ones will feed her from now on for about 4 or 5 years.
So far it has been a beautiful story. But what happens when the Queen ages and lays fewer and fewer eggs?
Will she be able to make that constitutional gesture, to leave the hive after her 4-year term expires? Some Queens want to trick the system. They lay a fertilized egg in the future queen’s cell, but when bees are not careful, she destroys it. He lays fewer and fewer eggs and irregularly, but the promise that will leave the throne to her daughter is not fulfilled. The bees rebel, surround the Queen and without bodyguard will overheat her. Overheated, the queen will suffocate and die. Now we can finally talk about democracy. But the hive is in great danger, because without the queen it is doomed to extinction.
But let’s see how the bee family works in times of crisis. Without the Queen, the bees will feed larvae in different stages of evolution with queen’s milk. And inside, queens will come out of there, but they are called “Rescue Queens.” In other words, they are of inferior quality. But when the organic evolution is interrupted, it will take two or three generations for the family to regain its vigor. Therefore, it would be preferable for beekeepers for the bee to change itself peacefully. Then the genetic material is very good, and the hive can grow in the best conditions.
If the rescue queen also fails and has a high chance of not returning from the flight of mating, then without the Queen a family is doomed to extinction. They not have the ability to procreate, because bees, without developed sexual organs and in the absence of the queen and without any egg to turn into a queen, will die. They will wake up one morning, after the period of mourning, remembering that thousands of years ago they were once queens, they had developed ovaries, they laid eggs. And they will even lay eggs that will be unfertilized. This work consumes a lot of energy. All food will disappear in a short time, dying of hunger, because no one will want to give up the state of Queen. Becoming crazy, in the true sense of the word will reach Anarchy. No one harvest honey anymore, no one defends the city of thieves, walking as zombies on the honeycomb for no reason.
It’s wonderful how society regulates itself like a family of bees. Only by observing nature will you understand the relationship between facts and History, such a pleasant relationship between determinism and free will. You will differentiate between events (history) and process (a mythical time). You will understand that History is full of such unfortunate events and that it resumes its flow according to some nature laws that we are still struggling to understand.
Because History is first an organism, a way of seeing the world not as an event, but as an whole. The revolution is only a moment in time, but History flows beyond events. D.M.
In the following posts we will see how democracy and the complex voting system work in the beehive based on a study by Tom Seeley, (National Honey Show) UK, 2018. We will go through all the stages and existential crises of the hive. We saw how easy is for a perfect society like honeybee to become close to Anarchy and extintion. In the next article we will answer the question, what kind of regime did the bees adopt when they decided to live in the Citadel, although according to Aristotle we cannot call them beasts, probably only small deities.
You can try to guess in a comment: constitutional Monarchy, caste Oligarchy, or jut Democracy? To many expectation from such a small beings, isn’t it?
