A wild honeybee colony in the hollow of an old oak, filmed in section. Every buy makes a flower bloom in the meadow; the foragers fly it home whole, the queen lays, the comb grows.
“The bee is more honoured than other animals, not because she labours, but because she labours for others.”— SAINT JOHN CHRYSOSTOM
The swarm settled in the hollow of an oak: a queen, her court and a few dozen workers on a first tongue of comb hanging from the ceiling of the cavity. Wax builders draw new comb whenever the hive gets crowded, section after section, until the whole hollow is full. The queen lays in the empty cells of the brood nest; eggs hatch into larvae, nurses feed them, the cells are capped and new workers chew their way out.
A flower is never cut. As many foragers as its weight demands grip it all around, fly it in through the knot hole in the bark and set it down beside the queen. Its nectar and pollen go into the comb: honey arches above the brood, a ring of pollen around it. Returning foragers dance on the floor by the entrance.
One hive runs on the server and every visitor watches the same bees. These buttons and the speed control act on that shared hive, so they only work from the operator's machine.
No bee knows the plan. The hive does.
A worker honeybee lives a few weeks and has a brain of about a million neurons. Together, tens of thousands of them heat the brood to the degree, build the most economical storage structure there is, choose a new home by vote and tell each other where the flowers are by dancing.
Biologists call the colony a superorganism: the bees are its cells, the comb its body, the dance its language. It is collective intelligence you can watch through glass.
Karl von Frisch decoded it and shared the Nobel Prize for it: a forager back from rich flowers runs a figure eight on the comb. The angle of the straight “waggle run” to the vertical is the direction of the food relative to the sun; its length is the distance. Watch the dance floor by the entrance.
Thomas Hales proved the honeycomb conjecture: of all ways to divide a plane into equal areas, the regular hexagon uses the least wall. Bees get there by working warm wax.
The brood nest is held near 34.5–35.5 °C. Workers shiver their flight muscles to heat it and fan to cool it. Switch to THERMAL to see it.
About a million neurons, with large mushroom bodies for learning and memory. Enough to learn colours, scents, landmarks and the time of day.
She mates once, on a flight with a dozen or more drones, and lays up to 1,500 eggs a day. Her court licks and grooms her and spreads her pheromone through the hive. She does not give orders.
3 days as an egg, about 6 as a larva fed by nurses, 12 sealed under a wax cap: on day 21 the young worker chews through the cap and climbs out, pale and fluffy, and rests by her cell while she dries. Here: 40 minutes from egg to bee, about 12 hours for the colony to fill the oak. Click ✦ BIRTH to watch one.
Wax flakes come from glands under the abdomen of young workers. Bees eat around 6 to 8 times its weight in honey to make it.
| What APIS shows | Status |
|---|---|
| Brood in the centre, pollen ring, honey arch | REAL |
| Waggle dance on a dance floor near the entrance | REAL |
| The queen's court (retinue) | REAL |
| Age-based jobs: nurse, builder, guard, forager | REAL |
| Brood nest near 35 °C | REAL |
| Whole flowers carried into the hive | FICTIONbees carry nectar and pollen |
| Tokens burned before the queen | FICTION |
von Frisch 1967 · Seeley 1995, 2010 · Winston 1987 · Hales 2001 · Tautz 2008 · Menzel 2012