Five Habits Of High Colony

How bees make the most important thing

There is a general misconception about bees, that is, their lives are ruled by a queen bee, perhaps even by a more exotic system.

But through 40 years of research on bees, I find this group extremely complex, in many respects even comparable to the animal brain, although it is quite simple to separate bees from each other.

Every year, bees will have to choose their new homes. In order to make decisions about life and death, they must work together to find out facts, debate fiercely, and finally reach a consensus.

This democratic process may be worth learning for people, especially those in the office.

Usually in late spring and early summer, the number of bees in the hive will be excessive. At this time, about 2/3 of worker bees and old queen bees (the total number often reaches 10000 bees) will leave the hive in droves and gather on nearby branches to form a bearded bee colony.

Then hundreds of reconnaissance bees fly to all directions to find holes in trees.

Of all the bees, these reconnaissance bees usually know the most about the world outside the hive.

The ideal location of the new hive may be hard to find: it needs to find a hole in a solid living tree, its opening is small, about 10 meters from the ground, and there should be at least 40 litres of space in the hole.

When the reconnaissance bee finds a potential new house, he will go in to see if the hole is large enough to be safe and then return to the colony, announcing his discovery by jumping the wagging dance, telling everyone the location of the tree hole.

When each reconnaissance bee reported the location they found, other reconnaissance bees would fly to the designated place according to the hint.

The direction of the wagging dance pointed out the direction of the new location relative to the sun's angle, and the length of each dance represented the distance. I said it was complicated! Every spy bee had to spy on the place where he was heading. If it thought it was an ideal residence, it would also dance the wagging dance after returning to the colony.

Bees are absolutely honest advertisers.

The higher their evaluation of new sites, the longer the dance time, and the more effective recruitment of other reconnaissance bees to the site.

This means that though reconnaissance bees bring back the colony.

Even if a single bee is not too clever, the collective wisdom of a colony can produce fruitful results.

Bees can almost always make the best choice from many of their discoveries. According to my experimental results, this probability is about 90%.

What can we learn from bees?

For millions of years, the reconnaissance bees in the colony have been shouldering the mission of choosing a suitable home.

They evolved through natural selection and formed their own "insect selection committee" to make the best decision.

These effective practices of the colony also apply to human groups.

We can learn from the bees the following five guidelines so as to achieve superb collective wisdom.

1., emphasize the common interests of the members of the group and promote mutual respect so as to promote their effective cooperation.

Reconnaissance bees know instinctively that their common interest is to choose the best place to live, so they will work together as a team.

There is no trick maker in the colony.

2., we should study various ways to solve the problem and maximize the probability of finding the best solution.

Reconnaissance bees must search in all directions in order to find out many possible residences.

3. summarize the knowledge of the group through a frank debate.

Use fair and open competition to differentiate good plans from bad ones.

Reconnaissance bees will be divided into several groups that support different programmes, and the winners will be determined through heated debates.

Which group is the first to attract enough supporters, and which group will win in the debate.

4. minimizes the influence of leaders on group thinking.

Leaders should act as fair mediators rather than preaching bosses, so that they can mobilize members of their own communities to mobilize common knowledge and brainpower.

There are no powerful leaders in reconnaissance bees, so they can investigate their plans in depth and extensively.

5. balance interdependence (information sharing) and independence among members of a group (without peer pressure).

Only when creativity can be openly shared and evaluated independently, can organizations effectively explore various options and make appropriate choices.

Reconnaissance bees will generously share their findings, but each spy bee will make its own decisions about whether or not to support a place.

I also used these methods in managing my own groups. They are very effective in building consensus and making excellent decisions.

Bees will tell you that with proper organizational structure, democratic organizations will show amazing intelligence, even smarter than the smartest people in the group.