wisdom of crowds

[Lucas Gonzalez]

A couple of days ago I learnt about bees and temperature.
When the temperature rises, each worker-bee feels it's too hot and
starts flapping its wings.  (When it's too cold they gather near.)
But:
- each bee is sensitive to different temperature threshold.  This
difference is genetically determined.
- there's just one queen and 10-30 "fathers", so there's a mixture of
sensitivities.  Part of the bees feel it's too hot sooner than others,
with a range of thresholds.
Now the most interesting part:
- a natural mixed population keeps the collective temperature with
small oscilations.
- an artificial population, selected so that all the bees have the same
father, has much greater oscilations.
Lucas





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