Honey bee societies and dance floor democracy | Margaret Couvillon | TEDxHousesofParliament 

Thank you for interesting video. Best wishes and great respect to the beekeepers and entomologists!

What a great presentation! This is probably one of the best explanations of the waggle dance and Margaret speaks so well!

"Oh Honey Bees! That's why your so sweet!" 😂😂😂😂

Wonderful presentation :)

Absolutely wonderful..!!!

To paraphrase Mr. Spock; "FASCINATING"! If only we had the will to begin, in earnest, moving away from our antiquated practices and putting these new technologies to work for the benefit of us all. If we did, just maybe, the beautiful future depicted in Star Trek might become a reality. Wonderful talk.

WHY DO HONEYBEEs DANCE? I didn't listen to this video as I saw a terrific docu on TV. She prob mentioned this; but evidently some of those I read yesterday on another page, were questioning this issue, didnt hear it. So just in case you didn't hear it either....I was SO blown away by what I learned, Id love to share it. Not claiming to be an expert or anything, The honeybee is more complicated, interesting, and fascinating than a lot of people seem to give credit. Just one bee goes out looking for a good food source. Once he finds it, he returns to the hive & does the dance & that actually shows the others how to find THAT food. His "dance " is actually telling the others distance & direction flown so they'll go right to it. They just go out & follow his directions, remembering every little wiggle of his dance, & find the food! I think that is fascinating!! BECAUSE... They all have to do SOME kind of "math", which is amazing, as they have to take his 'mini' show of the distances & convert them to the true distances! I sure can't think of any other insect with that kind of complex intellect... its not just instinct at work there. I mean he has to find the food in strange territory, on his own, & can get back to the hive, which is a backwards trip to the one he has to remember for the dance. And the others REMEMBER EVERY BIT of it, I THINK aft only seeing dance 1X, even if he made 10 changes in direction, AND ea pc of distance EXACTLY, finding what HE did. FASCINATING!!! It truly shows a lot of intelligence, &good memory to me. Amazing little creatures.

Dear Margaret, First of all, bees have probably been doing this for millions of years, so their system is probably better than our democracy, which is very young and premature. They had much more trial and error to converge to an optimal solution. So it seems we do have a lot to learn from them. Second, they seem to do it in a different way. The beginning is similar to what humans do: Individuals with vision start to advocate their message and gather followers. The same happens with bees: We do see them surrounding and even copying and following the dancing bee, even without foraging themselves. So, like in the human case, more charismatic leaders get more followers. In bees, charisma is measured by the number of dance cycles and other means of showing excitement. This is exactly like parties are formed in the human case. Unlike what is said in the video, not all dances have the same influence and impact. The next phase is different, and deserves full attention: We humans make at best a majority vote among all members of the state, what is called the popular vote. It seems that bees do it differently. In the bee case, the conflicting messages propagate throughout the colony, in growing circles. Different messages who had a different number of excited followers propagate through most of the colony. In the human case, this would result in a mess. In the bee case, This leads to a moment of coherent decision. It seems that our system of voting is artificial, not to mention the problem of the electoral college and such. The bees do it in a natural and beautiful way, which we probably need to learn and try to imitate as much as we can. The first stages seem less artificial in humans, but the last stage is. One hint to how the bees do it is that all bees seem to be constantly excited, in a continuous movement, which may describe humans always in a receptive mode rather than being stuck in old opinions and prejudice. The bees seem to be always willing to change their mind in a coherent manner. What is most striking is the natural way in which they all agree at the end. If humanity will survive thousands of years to the future, they may approach the genius expressed long ago by any colony of bees... Love, Dr. David Goren

more science please: how many goes and how many stays, and how many can go either , as majority concept is not enough, if the food is more majority ,otherwise it is a waste, if they can share the direction, how they memorise it as we jot it down to remember, ... and queen is mentioned but that is not enough , who cares in each family

You ever pass someone on the street and think, "Damn... I bet that person knows a lot about bees..."

American politicians need to watch this video😜

The Mason Bee does not use pollen in the nest. Any pollen that is carried with them is not saved for hive use and is known to have up to one hundred times the pollinating power of the Honeybee. So the myth that Honeybees are the only pollinators is fallacy.

Basic beekeeping facts but the ted talk tone makes it worth it

سبحان الله العظيم،،

Fascinating. Bees: not as good as ants, but still pretty dang cool.