Bees are not locked down and have exit options like swarming. Thus, revealed preferences point towards them preferring to be in managed hives over wild ones.
I would like to flag that with animals, arguing based on revealed preferences generally seems problematic.
(As many variants of that argument rely on being able to make choices, or being capable of long-term planning, etc. EG, similarly to what JamesOz pointed out, a single bee can hardly decide to swarm on its own. For another example, animals that live net negative lives probably do not commit suicide even if they could.)
I don’t think revealed preferences make philosophical sense in any context. If the enitity in question has an emotional reaction to its preference then that emotional reaction seems like an integral part of what matters. If it has no such emotional reaction then it seems presumptive to the point of being unparsable to say that it was revealing a preference for ‘not swarming’ vs, say ‘staying with an uncoordinated group that can therefore never spontaneously leave’ or still more abstract notions.
I would like to flag that with animals, arguing based on revealed preferences generally seems problematic.
(As many variants of that argument rely on being able to make choices, or being capable of long-term planning, etc. EG, similarly to what JamesOz pointed out, a single bee can hardly decide to swarm on its own. For another example, animals that live net negative lives probably do not commit suicide even if they could.)
I don’t think revealed preferences make philosophical sense in any context. If the enitity in question has an emotional reaction to its preference then that emotional reaction seems like an integral part of what matters. If it has no such emotional reaction then it seems presumptive to the point of being unparsable to say that it was revealing a preference for ‘not swarming’ vs, say ‘staying with an uncoordinated group that can therefore never spontaneously leave’ or still more abstract notions.