The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Honeybee Democracy

Honeybee DemocracyI had originally planned to write a lunchtime series about Thomas Seeley's Honeybee Democracy, but I ended up regaling you with most of the salient facts in my posts about our first swarm and our attempts to catch said swarm.  Plus, you can read the cliff-notes version of the parts most relevant to beekeepers in Swarm Traps and Bait Hives.

Even though I'm sticking to writing only one post about the book, I do heartily recommend that anyone interested in honeybees check it out, especially the first half before the text gets technical.  The author studied under E.O. Wilson, and his work was also informed by the methods of Karl von Frisch, so Seeley's work is based on sound science, and is carefully explained so it's understandable by laypeople.

As you probably gathered, the book is all about swarm behavior of honeybees, but the author interjects observations about how the bees' version of democracy can inform our own.  The last chapter (which you can read as a stand-alone ebook) considers five lessons we can learn from the bees:

So, what do you think --- would these bee lessons carry over to human groups?

The Avian Aqua Miser keeps your chickens' water clean and your coop dry.


Anna Hess's books
Want more in-depth information? Browse through our books.

Or explore more posts by date or by subject.

About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.


Hi--sorry! Something technical seems to bekeeps\ing me from reading others' comments on this subject...what would you call this, in the bee's life style? Thanks!
Comment by adrianne Sat May 25 13:52:59 2013
Mom --- You're the first commenter on this post, so maybe that's what you're having trouble with?
Comment by anna Sat May 25 14:22:19 2013

Hi - I just ordered the book and linked to your post from my blog at http://thisonegoodlife.blogspot.com/2013/05/forget-spelling-bees-today-were-doing.html because it seemed applicable. It's my first year and the learning curve is steep in beekeeping!

Comment by Katharina Sat May 25 15:35:57 2013





profile counter myspace



Powered by Branchable Wiki Hosting.

Required disclosures:

As an Amazon Associate, I earn a few pennies every time you buy something using one of my affiliate links. Don't worry, though --- I only recommend products I thoroughly stand behind!

Also, this site has Google ads on it. Third party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user's prior visits to a website. Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to users based on their visit to various sites. You can opt out of personalized advertising by visiting this site.