honeybees are sweetness and light—producers of honey and beeswax—so it
is no great wonder that humans have prized these small creatures since ancient
times. even today, when rich sweets and bright lights are commonplace, we humans
continue to treasure these hard-working insects, especially the 200 billion
or so that live in partnership with commercial beekeepers and perform on our
behalf a critical agricultural mission: go forth and pollinate. In north america,
the managed honeybees are the primary pollinators for some 50 fruit and vegetable
crops, which together form the most nutritious portion of our daily diet.
but honeybees also provide us another great gift, one that feeds our brains rather
than our bellies, for inside each teeming beehive is an exemplar of a community
whose members succeed in working together to achieve shared goals. We will
see that these little six-legged beauties have something to teach us about building
smoothly functioning groups, especially ones capable of exploiting fully the
power of democratic decision making.
our lessons will come from just one species of honeybee, Apis mellifera, the
best-known insect on the planet. originally native to western asia, the mid-