Informational cascades in honeybee swarming behaviour
Honeybee behavior has proven to be pretty difficult to study. However, in a recent study by Nicole S. Carver and Damian Kelty-Stephen has analyzed the behavior of honeybees and determined their behavior to be kind of like an information cascade. The mathematical signals of the information cascade of the honeybees was analyzed over a period of 5 to 7 weeks in 5 different bee hives. The behavior of the bees is unique because the bees have unique decision-making processes. An example given was that in a decision of whether to leave a beehive and find a new one or not, the bees “vote” by doing a waggle dance. The “votes” are cast after some bees scout out new potential homes, and the “votes” are seemingly done without any social pressure. A decision is made after a certain threshold of bee votes is met or not.
The study interprets bee behavior as a “multi-fractal information cascade”. This relates to class in our study of information cascades. Particularly on whether decisions were made by either direct benefit to the person making the decision or as a decision based off of information. If the bees truly individually make their decisions without any kind of social pressure, it could be that the bees always make their decision based off of what they believe to be direct benefit to them or the hive.
http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/Informational-cascades-in-honeybee-swarming-behaviour/article17288716.ece