Chris' Blog

I've been thinking about bees lately.  I'm facinated by the sociology of bees.
 
As it turns out, there is a certain percentage of bees within the colony that have a more bohemian lifestyle, that is to say, that roughly 3% of a bee colony consists of a more indepent thinking bee, independent of the hive mentality that is. 
 
Basically these bees just sorta hang around, fly off on wims, explore the surrounding territory, and generally do their own "thang"
 
Dude.
 
Now initial thoughts might be, well, how dare that 3% dick around wilst all the other bees are busy doing their jobs.   Bee colonies are esentially socialist in essence, well, sorta, recent research in New Zealand revealed that honeybee colonies are kept in order and subversive due to a certain pheremone that the queen releases, but thats another story.
 
Anyway....the 3%. 
 
As I was saying bee colonies are basically socialist in nature.  Typically life within the bee colony is business as usuall.  The workers go about their business collecting and processing, all for the good of the colony.  No questions asked. 
 
 At times, life back in the hive slows down  occacionally.  Essentially what happens as bees start to exaust their supply of available pollen, they actually begin to grow depressed.  They start to leave the hive less, work slows down, and generally they approach a global bee hive economic melt down.  
 
Now the 3% bohemian bees, are out doing their thing, checking stuff out,  whatever.  It would be easy to think that perhaps these bees are just wasting time and shirking their duty, when in fact, they are performing a very important task.   As it turns out, these "bohemian" bees show up just in time to to prevent total hive collapse.  When they're out goofing off, they are actually discovering new territories, and information, which they bring back to the rest of the colony in the form of dance, thereby inspiring and transmitting the necessary information (which just happens to include new sources of pollen) snapping the worker bees out of their depressed state, so they can go about their business.
 
And that my dear friends, is my rationale.