Hive thriving

The bee felt a wave of relief as it re-entered the hive. Its foraging expedition had been challenging, with a terrifying moment when it almost got caught in a spider's web. No wonder the tiny creature felt stressed out.

Not long ago, scientists would have dismissed this scenarioAn imaginary situation. The word was originally Italian and referred to the plot of a stage drama. as nonsense. Because a bee has a brain the size of a poppy seed, it was thought to be unable to experience suffering. But advances in neurobiology now paint a very different picture.

A new book called What a Bee Knows argues that the insects can feel emotions including fear, optimism, playfulness and frustration. According to its author, Stephen Buchmann, bees can experience trauma, distinguish one human face from another, process memories while they are asleep, and possibly dream.  

"Bees are self-aware, they're sentientAble to perceive or feel things., and they possibly have a primitive form of consciousness," he writes. "They solve problems and can think."

The relationship between humans and bees is a very old one. A spear point estimated to be 40,000 years old was attached to the shaft with beeswax.¹

Ancient pictures of bees have been found on rocks in countries as far apart as Egypt and Australia. The MayaA group of indigenous peoples of Central America. people in Central America worshipped a bee god.

In many cultures, bees are a symbol of wisdom and hard work. They are also admired for their fierceness in defending their hives.

Their powers of organisation are formidable too. A hive can contain thousands of bees working as a team, with each having a specific role.

Worker bees collect pollen, make honey and care for the queen. Drones scout for food supplies and protect the hive. Other bees look after the larvaeInsects in the next stage of development after they have emerged from eggs. A caterpillar is a larva..

Agriculture depends heavily on pollinationThe process through which pollen is taken from one plant to another so that new seeds can be made. by bees. But they are suffering badly from human interference in the natural world, poisoned by pesticides and deprived of many of their habitats.

A particularly worrying phenomenon is colony collapse, in which the entire population of a hive dies in a single season. Stephen Buchmann believes this is partly the result of psychological stress that bees suffer because of modern farming methods. 

He hopes that recognising that bees have feelings will persuade people to treat them better. A Californian company called BeeHero is developing ways to monitor their wellbeing.

Should bees run the world? 

Yes: Bees are incredibly well-organised, hard-working and unselfish. The hives they live in are models of harmony and the world would be a far better place if parliaments operated in the same way.

No: Bees simply do what they are programmed to do. They have no individuality and cannot try new things or take the initiative, which is essential if a community is to make progress.   

Or... In a way they already do. The Western honeybee pollinates three quarters of the fruit, vegetables and nuts that we eat. Without them our whole system of producing food would fall apart.