Honeybee Swarms Pick New Homes After 15 Scouts Reach Quorum, Favoring Best Sites

1 articles · Updated · spacedaily.com · Jun 17

Roughly 15 scouts at one cavity trigger a honeybee swarm’s move, with the colony lifting off only after that local quorum is reached.
Several hundred scouts inspect 10 to 20 sites, then use waggle dances to signal direction, distance and site quality; better cavities earn longer dances and recruit more followers.
Appledore Island tests found swarms chose the single excellent nest box in four of five trials, even when poorer boxes were discovered hours earlier.
Seeley and P. Kirk Visscher also showed that spreading scouts across identical boxes delayed departure, supporting a quorum-at-one-site mechanism rather than a colony-wide vote.
The process can take two to three days, suggesting the swarm trades speed and exposure for a more reliable collective choice.