The wisdom of the hive
Subtitle: the social physiology of honey bee colonies
By: Thomas D. Seeley.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 1995
Place of publication: Cambridge, Mass
Language: eng
Number of pages: 295
Subjects: Honeybee -- Food.; Honeybee -- Behavior.
Description: This book is about the inner workings of one of nature's most complex animal societies: the honey bee colony. It describes and illustrates the results of more than fifteen years of elegant experimental studies conducted by the author. In his investigations, Thomas Seeley has sought the answer to the question of how a colony of bees is organized to gather its resources.

The results of his research - including studies of the shaking signal, tremble dance, and waggle dance, and other, more subtle means by which information is exchanged among bees - offer the clearest, most detailed picture available of how a highly integrated animal society works.

By showing how several thousand bees function together as an integrated whole to collect the nectar, pollen, and water that sustain the life of the hive, Seeley sheds light on one of the central puzzles of biology: how units at one level of organization can work together to form a higher-level entity.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [277]-289) and index.