Update: I’ve just realized this is my 100th post. YAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!
Most of my wildlife adventures take place in either the Glen River Park, which is great for seeing birds and insects, and The Lough, which is great for all manner of waterbirds. But what I didn’t realize at first was that a great place for wildlife is Fitzgerald’s Park. It’s a lovely park, and I have many happy memories associated with it, but because the park is relatively small, I didn’t think there were much opportunities for seeing animals there. But of late I’ve realized that assumption is wrong. Indeed, I saw my first ever damselfly there.
A few days later I got a close up of a damselfly.
And, two days ago, I got my first ever photograph of a dragonfly.
It was a blistering hot day, and there were at least four dragonflies. Early on in the photography session this one stopped for about ninety seconds, and I swooped in with the camera. I was extremely lucky, because for the rest of the photography session, lasting a few hours, the dragonflies did not stop, at all. I was very fortunate.
Next I caught some photographs of some of my favourite birds.
So satisfied that I had caught my first ever photograph of a dragonfly, and also some of favourite birds, my next question was. Where are the bees? No wildlife session is complete without seeing some bees, because bees are indescribably awesome. So where were they?
I looked all over the park for the bees, this was odd. A day so beautiful it had brought out all the dragonflies. And apparently no bees? But then, I checked a section of the park a bit nearer the entrance and……
There were so many bees!!!!
So I had found a section of the park with some of the most beautiful flowers I had ever seen. And the honeybees seemed to agree. Because there were more of them on these beautiful flowers than I could count. For most of the Summer, you’d see a bee here and there, and that’s great, but it’s only over the last few weeks or so that I’ve seen bees in large numbers. And on that day in Fitzgerald’s Park, in that section with the those amazing flowers, there were probably more bees than there were people in the whole park, despite the fact that it was a beautiful day and the park was packed with humans.
Sadly, I’m not a flower expert so I can’t tell you what these wonderful plants are called, but, the sight of the bees on them was amazing. The colours of the flowers were so intense, but they also had an almost alien quality to them, like I was looking at bees exploring a distant planet.
It was actually a bit tiring trying to photograph as many of these wonderful bees as possible, there’s one, click, there’s one, click, there’s one, I was actually a little worn out after I decided I’ve enough bee photos for the day (always a very hard decision to make). But this is the most honeybees I’ve ever photographed in a single photography session.
And a short distance away, there were these lovely blue flowers. And on top of them, also an army of bees!
And Now We’re Going To Talk About the Fact That Honeybees Vote
Yes, that’s right, honeybees vote. They have referendums. Why would you assume that they can’t do that? Because you’re a speciesist that’s why!
Yes, honeybees vote. They have referendums. And they do it through the medium of dance. And that settles that then, I’m leaving human society forever to go and live with the bees.
But don’t honeybee hives have a queen? Yes, but she doesn’t have any power. Think of her like a figurehead for ceremonial purposes. The voting is done by the female worker bees. As honeybee hives get too big, the decision is eventually made that half of the bees must head off elsewhere to find a new hive.
If a honeybee encounters a good site for a new hive, she will return to the other bees, and will “dance”, for the new site. The dance, called a waggle dance, contains the co-ordinates of the new site, so it could be thought of as like a type of sign language. Another honey bee will take note of these co-ordinates, and go out and check out this new site herself, and if she likes it, she will come back and dance for this new site. If another bee checks out the site and likes it, she will dance for this new site, and so will another bee, and so will another bee, and so on and so forth, and whatever site the majority of the bees dance for, that will be chosen as the new site for the hive!
This to me is the single most amazing fact I have ever learned about bees. I would have thought voting was something that only humans do. (Well not all humans, fuck fascism.) But to think that bees engage in this act of decision making too is simply incredible. Sometimes an intense debate will happen about the new site for the nest. And the communication of the co-ordinates of a new site is complicated. I’ve gone over and over how they give the location in relation to the position of the sun, and I still don’t fully understand it!
And they don’t just vote on a new hive location, they also vote on the best food sources. So, when I witnessed those bees eating the nectar inside those beautiful flowers, I was witnessing democracy in action, the democracy of a species that is so different from humans.
Now of course it’s not exactly the same as human democracy. We will never see a congressperson or senator advocating for a policy by dancing (though that would be awesome.) And honeybees do not have to worry about such things as brown envelopes (so it’s better than human democracy in some ways!) But what amazes me about it, is that, bees are very distant from humans, our last common ancestor with bees would have lived maybe 300 million years ago or more.
It does appear to be the case that a system of voting was invented twice, by two completely different species, by humans, and by honeybees.
It makes you wonder how common democratic systems are in the animal kingdom, and, if aliens live out there in the universe, how common is it for them to have voting systems?
And, the question I have often wondered before, talked about it a few times on this blog, is, to what extent do animals such as honeybees, think and feel? If it is true, that part of the reason that humans can engage in complex activities, is that they have complex thoughts and a complex set of emotions, could it be that bee democracy is so complex that honeybees must have the same?
Such an amazing day, the beautiful sun brought out the birds, the dragonflies, and so many honeybees, out to collect information so they could make their argument in their hive/parliament. As a person with quite severe travel anxiety, I’m quite grateful for the fact that there are so many wonders to see a very short distance from my home.
Ponderings Of An Autist 