Thanks for sharing this, and please forgive my very basic question: is there anything stopping bees from flying away? If they choose to be in managed hives, that seems like it presents some evidence they prefer them over making their own.
While I don’t completely agree with the post[1], I think “the bees can simply fly away” is not a strong objection.
If the bees fly away, they would be abandoning all their larvae (young bees) in the hive to die.
When they need a new hive location, they follow basic instincts which selects the location based on how much room it has, how well sheltered it is, competition (maybe), etc. They are incapable of deducing “oh this new location is in a tree, if we set up a hive here then the unpleasant treatment from humans will stop, because tree holes are natural and have no doors for humans.”
They have rudimentary planning abilities but zero understanding of humans.
I’m no expert but my guess (and partially confirmed by some googling) is that they’ve been bred for docility/traits that make them more likely to stay rather than leave. o3 also suggests:
Queen pheromones – a chemical “social glue” that keeps workers oriented to this queen and this cavity. If the queen dies or her pheromone output drops, cohesion collapses and bees drift or abscond. (So seems like the queen partially acts as an anchor to keep the rest of the bees and as long as her life is devoid of intense stress, she stays.)
Investment already sunk – comb, brood and the bulk of their honey are immovable. Walking away means writing off weeks of labour and risking starvation.
Risk calculus – only ~20 % of natural swarms survive to become established colonies; absconding is even riskier.
Absconding (leaving the hive) is triggered by intense stress: chronic overheating, prolonged food dearth, heavy predator or beekeeper disturbance, or severe parasite loads (notably Varroa)
I agree, and find animal preferences an interesting question. Sometimes it seems there’s the claim that animals like bees are super intelligent/sentient yet on the other hand they choose to live a life of higher suffering in a beehive than they would in the wild?
I’m not sure we can have our cake and eat it too—but wonder what others think.
When I made this point in my response post, people pointed out that in some cases the queen’s wings are clipped to prevent the entire colony from leaving. This doesn’t strictly prevent all the bees from leaving; an older queen can send out princesses (“virgin queens”) with a fraction of the rest of the hive in a practice known as “swarming.” However, it does limit the possibility of all of the bees leaving en masse (“absconding”).
I couldn’t figure out quickly how common wing-clipping is. My current guess is that it is not very common (in this beekeeper subreddit post, some beekeepers claimed to have never heard of it[1]). However I have high error bars and this is indeed cruxy for how much autonomy and exit rights managed honeybees in practice have.
This is unfortunately less evidence than it may initially sound. It could still be one of those common cases in factory farming where the majority of farmers have very different experiences than the majority of farmed animals, because (unlike with HR departments managing humans) it’s very possible that Big Bee has on average worse practices than small hobbyist beekeepers who are both more active online and more charismatic.
Thanks for sharing this, and please forgive my very basic question: is there anything stopping bees from flying away? If they choose to be in managed hives, that seems like it presents some evidence they prefer them over making their own.
It turns out, these managed hives, they’re just un-bee-leave-able.
Winning comment strong upvote
While I don’t completely agree with the post[1], I think “the bees can simply fly away” is not a strong objection.
If the bees fly away, they would be abandoning all their larvae (young bees) in the hive to die.
When they need a new hive location, they follow basic instincts which selects the location based on how much room it has, how well sheltered it is, competition (maybe), etc. They are incapable of deducing “oh this new location is in a tree, if we set up a hive here then the unpleasant treatment from humans will stop, because tree holes are natural and have no doors for humans.”
They have rudimentary planning abilities but zero understanding of humans.
I’m unsure about the quantification of conscious experience.
I’m no expert but my guess (and partially confirmed by some googling) is that they’ve been bred for docility/traits that make them more likely to stay rather than leave. o3 also suggests:
Queen pheromones – a chemical “social glue” that keeps workers oriented to this queen and this cavity. If the queen dies or her pheromone output drops, cohesion collapses and bees drift or abscond. (So seems like the queen partially acts as an anchor to keep the rest of the bees and as long as her life is devoid of intense stress, she stays.)
Investment already sunk – comb, brood and the bulk of their honey are immovable. Walking away means writing off weeks of labour and risking starvation.
Risk calculus – only ~20 % of natural swarms survive to become established colonies; absconding is even riskier.
Absconding (leaving the hive) is triggered by intense stress: chronic overheating, prolonged food dearth, heavy predator or beekeeper disturbance, or severe parasite loads (notably Varroa)
I agree, and find animal preferences an interesting question. Sometimes it seems there’s the claim that animals like bees are super intelligent/sentient yet on the other hand they choose to live a life of higher suffering in a beehive than they would in the wild?
I’m not sure we can have our cake and eat it too—but wonder what others think.
When I made this point in my response post, people pointed out that in some cases the queen’s wings are clipped to prevent the entire colony from leaving. This doesn’t strictly prevent all the bees from leaving; an older queen can send out princesses (“virgin queens”) with a fraction of the rest of the hive in a practice known as “swarming.” However, it does limit the possibility of all of the bees leaving en masse (“absconding”).
I couldn’t figure out quickly how common wing-clipping is. My current guess is that it is not very common (in this beekeeper subreddit post, some beekeepers claimed to have never heard of it[1]). However I have high error bars and this is indeed cruxy for how much autonomy and exit rights managed honeybees in practice have.
This is unfortunately less evidence than it may initially sound. It could still be one of those common cases in factory farming where the majority of farmers have very different experiences than the majority of farmed animals, because (unlike with HR departments managing humans) it’s very possible that Big Bee has on average worse practices than small hobbyist beekeepers who are both more active online and more charismatic.
I believe it is a relatively common beekeeping practice to clip a wing of the queen bee to prevent the colony leaving