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Researchers from the University of Sheffield have discovered that looking at honey bees in a colony in the same way as neurons in a brain could help us better understand the basic mechanisms of human behaviour.

The team studied a theoretical model of how honeybees decide where to build their nest and viewed the bee colony as a single superorganism which displays a coordinated response to external stimuli – similar to the human brain. The study concluded that the way in which bees “speak” with each other and make decisions is comparable to the way the many individual neurons in the human brain interact with each other.

I found this book review in The Economist and bought it straightaway. I've started reading it and, so far, it's everything I hoped it would be:

Did you know that one bee has to fly approximately 90,000 miles (144,841 kilometres), or about three times around the Earth, and gather nectar from some 2 million flowers to make a mere 1 pound (0.45 kilograms) of honey? That's a lot of work for just one little Apis mellifera. So it's a good thing honey bees are well-organized, task-oriented insects who stick together like family in colonies of several thousand workers per hive.

And did you know that the honey bee is the only insect that produces food eaten by humans (unless, of course, cockroach milk takes off and becomes a thing)? And that honey is nature's perfect food?

A team of researchers from France and Australia has identified the neurological mechanism that underlies honeybee aggression in response to threats. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the group describes their study of honeybees and what they found.

Scientists have uncovered which bacterial species in the bee gut allow them to digest their pollen-rich diet.