
Swarm of bees follow car for over 24 hours (2016) - howard941
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/24/swarm-of-bees-follow-grandmothers-car-for-over-24-hours-attempti/
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ergothus
Swarming bees are unusual creatures.

I've seen a tree that had three large (~8in/20cm) balls of bees hanging off of
branches. My grandfather (a beekeeper) said the queen had likely stopped at
each spot to consider it for a hive (leaving pheromones), then moved on, and
the swarm landed at each place. He was greatly entertained at the idea that
the bees on the outside were trying to get to the queen (who wasn't there) and
the bees on the inside had figured that out but couldn't leave because of the
bees on the outside.

That said, my grandfather was a beekeeper and a father is a beekeeper and I'm
a little uncertain about how much of their hobby is built on communal
agreement, anecdotes, and personal experience as opposed to scientific data.
(The same can be said about our profession though - what was the last good
study on code readability you read vs the opinions on code readability you
have?)

~~~
jly
> My grandfather (a beekeeper) said the queen had likely stopped at each spot
> to consider it for a hive (leaving pheromones), then moved on, and the swarm
> landed at each place.

Usually (but not always) when you see multiple swarm clusters like that, a
hive has sent out more than one swarm, each with it's own queen. The primary,
largest swarm will contain the original hive queen while the others will
contain virgin queens. If they happen to combine into one cluster, the queens
will likely fight and only one will survive to lead the swarm.

The queen never leaves the swarm cluster, and has no bearing on the decision
of hive location. The swarm sends out scout workers who inspect locations for
suitability and report back to the cluster. Through a voting process, the
workers decide and move as one to the permanent home.

If you're interested in this topic (which is fascinating), there is a great
book on it called 'Honeybee Democracy' by the bee researcher Thomas Seeley.

> That said, my grandfather was a beekeeper and a father is a beekeeper and
> I'm a little uncertain about how much of their hobby is built on communal
> agreement, anecdotes, and personal experience as opposed to scientific data.

Partly because of the commercial value of honeybees to our food production,
they have been studied to an extent not seen in many other organisms,
certainly not most insects. We know a LOT about their behavior, although there
is still much to learn.

What's really interesting is that beekeepers often neglect what we do know
about how bees evolved to live so that we can keep them in ways that make our
lives easier. This is often detrimental.

~~~
the_af
> _The queen never leaves the swarm cluster, and has no bearing on the
> decision of hive location. The swarm sends out scout workers who inspect
> locations for suitability and report back to the cluster. Through a voting
> process, the workers decide and move as one to the permanent home._

> _If you 're interested in this topic (which is fascinating), there is a
> great book on it called 'Honeybee Democracy' by the bee researcher Thomas
> Seeley._

Fascinating! So it isn't a monarchy after all? :P Thanks for the
recommendation.

~~~
jjoonathan
Haha, it's a monarchy -- where all the queens who didn't listen to their
subjects are now dead for some reason. Funny how that works!

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natalyarostova
A little bit of a tangent to the main topic but...

>I'm a little uncertain about how much of their hobby is built on communal
agreement, anecdotes, and personal experience as opposed to scientific data.

Scientific data, which we interpret to mean a more thoughtful hypothesis and
data gathering mechanism, is not always more correct than anecdote and
personal experience. For example, it turns out we'd have been better off
taking nutrition advice from our great-grandmas in the old country, rather
than the mid 20th century scientific analysis (gathering data and running
regressions) on the optimal way to eat macro-nutrients.

In some cases when knowledge is generated by a complex non-linear system, the
default human approach of building anecdotes and personal experience is
stronger.

Similarly, I'd sooner trust the sage wisdom on code readability from some 50
year old open source hackers, then a team of PhDs in their 20s or 30s, who
studied a bunch of teams and summarized their results.

~~~
scarejunba
Huh, interesting. Well, that's a flaw in the epistemological process, right?
What is the problem?

~~~
hammock
No, it's a flaw in the scientific process.

~~~
afiori
It is not really a flaw in the scientific progress, but in the distribution of
trust. The scientific method essentially offer eventual correctness, that is
that every mistake made now will be eventually corrected.

How we decide when it is enough is a separate hard problem we still do not
know how to handle. This is also the reason why science as arbiter of truth is
at best sketchy (out of very specific instances e.g. black holes).

~~~
hammock
>eventual correctness, that is that every mistake made now will be eventually
corrected.

That is not a feature unique to the scientific method, though. The same could
be said of narrative tradition, or the heat death of the universe for that
matter.

~~~
afiori
> The same could be said of narrative tradition,

I disagree, I hold in very high regard the truth of traditions, but they
clearly lack an internal method to correct wrong assumptions. They have an
external method, that is a society dies and a "better" one take its place.
Science does not need to (either figuratively or literally) die to fix wrong
information.

With a stretch of the meaning then, ok. But it is like saying that evolution
will create the perfect creature eventually without mentioning that everything
resembling us will be long dead at that point.

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lostlogin
The person who was worried someone would kill them was not silly. I have been
called to remove 2 swarms this year after the homeowner had already doused
them in flyspray. The last one was a bit bigger than a basketball. Depressing.

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Causality1
The article explicitly states there was no queen and they don't know why the
bees swarmed her car.

~~~
rdiddly
Maybe God finally saved the queen?

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ceedan
Interesting that she drove a Mitsubeeshi

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tptacek
At like, minute #31, I'm going to a car wash.

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ryanmarsh
_" One theory was that the queen was trapped in my car and the swarm were
following,” Carol said._

 _" But they couldn't find the queen anywhere so I've no idea if that was
right._

Soo... can we please change the title on this one to something not clickbait
bs?

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exabrial
So to give the script writers of Tommy Boy credit, this isn't impossible....

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th0ma5
Reminds me of The Savage Bees (1976)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Savage_Bees](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Savage_Bees)

~~~
rdiddly
And of course the much bigger/better-funded (but apparently less-original)
"The Swarm" (1978):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swarm_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swarm_\(film\))

~~~
DonHopkins
Wax or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wax_or_the_Discovery_of_Televi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wax_or_the_Discovery_of_Television_Among_the_Bees)

>As the first film streamed across the Internet in 1993, the New York Times
declaring Wax or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees an “historic
event.”

>Blair performs in the film, which additionally features a cameo by William
Burroughs. As an anti-war statement, Wax provided an early critique of the
Gulf War and current-day drone warfare. A combination of innovative digital
animation, found footage, and live action, Wax’s visual form is a unique
representation of the technologies and politics that it critiques, which still
reverberate today.

[http://www.waxweb.org/](http://www.waxweb.org/)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl3eEzuLwPk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl3eEzuLwPk)

Wax or The Discovery of Television Among the Bees [85:00, 1991] [English
version]:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6mXatS-4ns](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6mXatS-4ns)

~~~
th0ma5
Of course NYT would call it "an historic" rather than "a historic" due to the
east coast H dropping. I'll show myself out :P

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anonu
Bees are some of the most fascinating creatures around. I feel like we know
close to nothing about how they live and communicate.

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jasonlfunk
Is this article format normal for the telegraph? It seems strange to just have
so many consecutive quotations in a row.

~~~
mattnewport
And so much repetition, the editing is really rather poor on this article.

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zoidb
Misleading headline:

> "One theory was that the queen was trapped in my car and the swarm were
> following,” Carol said.

> "But they couldn't find the queen anywhere so I've no idea if that was
> right.

~~~
JdeBP
Not being able to find the queen does not mean that she is not there. They are
quite difficult to locate, sometimes.

Plus, this isn't a quotation from an actual beekeeper. It's a quotation from
the driver of the car.

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newscracker
Mods, this needs a (2016) in the title.

~~~
dang
Added. Thanks!

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creaghpatr
Ok I'll say it...this is like that Black Mirror episode:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hated_in_the_Nation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hated_in_the_Nation)

~~~
Shorel
No, real bees must be saved.

Black Mirror used robotic artificial bees.

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john-radio
To the tune of...

~~~
john-radio
"Tank!" from Cowboy Bebop

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Communitivity
Shades of the movie Jupiter Ascending. I wonder if the woman is related to
Jupiter Jones. In seriousness, someone should have made an inventory of the
products in her car and on it, because if that's something that's going to
happen again it could put even more strain on a a fragile bee ecosystem. It
could also lead to more effective bee repellents, and/or tools for beekeepers.

