Bees!

Are they really a Hive Mind?

Well that depends on your definition of a hive mind, bees are not telepathically linked, but they can communicate over long distances through scent. Queen bees have a certain scent that attracts all the workers to create a new hive, and worker bees will scent pollen filled flowers to attract others. They also communicate in closer range through ‘dance’ like movements.

Honey bees fly from their colony looking for nectar and pollen. When they are successful in locating good food supplies, they then return to their hive and performs a dance on the honeycomb. At first, the bee walks a straight line while shaking its abdomen vigorously. The bee also makes a buzzing sound with its wings. The speed and distance of the movement conveys the distance of where the food source is so other bees can find it. Communicating the path to follow is more complex because the bee performing the waggle dance talk will align their body in the exact direction of where the food is in accordance with the sun. The dance pattern looks like a figure-eight, as the honey bee keeps repeating the straight part of the movement every time it circles back to the center area again.

An insite to the different roles in Honey bees, also the mutualism in a working hive. –CH

Eusociality:

Organisms that operate in a ‘cooperative brood’. Bees, ants and termites are ‘eusocial’. It is considered the “the highest level of organization of animal sociality”, where labour is distributed and offspring is raised by a colony rather than individual parent. Eusociality typically involves ‘endogomy’ which is the practise of only marrying/mating with others of the same race. Species in a eusocial group do not stray from their group to breed with individuals from beyond their group. Naked mole rats are a mammal example of animals that live in eusocial groups, they too have a queen who is primarily responsible for reproduction, but it means that the creatures are quite inbred. To reduce inbreeding, they will occasionally establish new colonies with outsiders.