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The Secret Life of Bees

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Historical Context of The Secret Life of Bees

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• Full Title: The Secret Life of Bees
• Where Written: Georgia, South Carolina
• When Published: November 8, 2001
• Literary Period: Third-wave feminism fiction
• Genre: Coming-of-age story ( Bildungsroman ), historical fiction
• Setting: Sylvan, South Carolina, 1964
• Climax: August Boatwright reveals that she knew Lily’s mother
• Antagonist: T. Ray Owens / racism in America
• Point of View: First person (Lily Owens)

Extra Credit for The Secret Life of Bees

The movie, of course: In 2008, The Secret Life of Bees was adapted for the big screen. The film, which starred Queen Latifah and Dakota Fanning, was a modest box-office success, but didn’t get particularly good reviews.

High school classic: If you went to middle school or high school in the last decade, you were probably assigned The Secret Life of Bees for your English class. A recent survey found that Kidd’s novel is one of the ten most commonly taught high school English texts in America, just a notch below To Kill a Mockingbird and 1984 .

The Secret Life of Bees

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A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-8

Chapters 9-10

Chapters 11-12

Chapters 13-14

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Zach gifts Lily a notebook for her stories after he learns of her dreams to be a writer someday. What does this practice of writing things down, of telling stories, release in Lily? Why is this activity important for her?

How do Lily’s racist beliefs come to the surface in the pink house? Why is she suddenly able to see some of her own implicit biases more clearly?

Grief is a subject that takes many shapes in this novel. How does witnessing others’ grief help Lily move through her own?

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The Secret Life of Bees Summary, Characters and Themes

In the sweltering summer of 1964 in South Carolina, a young girl named Lily Owens embarks on a transformative journey, narrating her story from the wisdom of adulthood. 

“The Secret Life of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd is a one such story – a narrative of growth and self-discovery set against the backdrop of racial tensions and personal tragedy.

Lily’s life is shadowed by a profound loss she caused at the tender age of four—accidentally killing her mother during a domestic dispute. 

This incident left her motherless, with only a haunting memory and a longing for what she lost. Her only solace and maternal figure is Rosaleen, her Black caretaker, whose attempt to register to vote ends in violence and arrest. 

Driven by desperation and the clue of a Black Madonna image left by her mother, Lily decides it’s time to flee her abusive father and discover her mother’s past. Together, Lily and Rosaleen venture to Tiburon, South Carolina, a place linked to Lily’s mother through a photograph.

Upon their arrival, they are unexpectedly welcomed by the Boatwright sisters—May, June, and August—who live in an enchanting pink house amidst a thriving bee farm. The sisters are keepers of secrets and makers of honey, living a life that is as sweet as it is complex. 

Lily finds herself in a world vastly different from her own, navigating the nuances of race, love, and belonging.

As Lily immerses herself in the art of beekeeping under August’s guidance, she learns more than just how to tend to bees. 

She discovers the delicate balance of nature, the strength of sisterhood, and the power of the divine feminine. The bees and their hive become metaphors for life, teaching Lily about community, resilience, and the sweet rewards of hard work.

However, Lily’s journey is not just one of external discovery but also of inward reflection. She grapples with her guilt, her anger towards her father, and her yearning for maternal love. 

Through her interactions with the Boatwright sisters and the sacred figure of Our Lady of Chains, Lily begins to understand that the divine mother she seeks is also within herself, offering a path to forgiveness and self-acceptance.

Lily Owens is the heart of “The Secret Life of Bees,” embarking on a journey of self-discovery and spiritual awakening during the pivotal summer of 1964. At 14, grappling with the trauma of accidentally causing her mother’s death, Lily’s narrative unfolds as a bildungsroman and a hero’s journey intertwined. 

Through her quest to uncover her mother’s past and find a place where she belongs, Lily confronts her own inner demons, racial biases, and the longing for maternal love. Her stay at the Boatwright sisters’ house becomes a crucible for growth, where she learns about the divine feminine, the complexities of race, and ultimately finds a deeper understanding of herself.

T. Ray Owens

Portrayed through Lily’s eyes, T. Ray is initially cast as the antagonist of her story. His abusive behavior and emotional distance are manifestations of his own unresolved grief over his wife’s death. 

The narrative allows for a gradual unveiling of T. Ray’s complexities, revealing a man struggling with loss and unable to connect with his daughter. By the novel’s end, Lily’s expanded understanding of T. Ray reflects her own journey towards empathy and maturity.

Rosaleen Daise

Rosaleen, Lily’s stand-in mother and fiercely protective caretaker, catalyzes the plot with her determination to assert her civil rights. 

Her relationship with Lily undergoes a transformation as they integrate into the Boatwright household, highlighting themes of independence, racial identity, and the bonds that transcend blood. Rosaleen’s growth mirrors Lily’s, as both navigate their identities and relationships in the face of societal and personal challenges.

June Boatwright

June, initially resistant to Lily’s presence, represents the challenges of overcoming prejudice and personal trauma. 

Her journey, paralleling Lily’s, is one of opening her heart to love and vulnerability. Through June, the novel explores themes of forgiveness, healing, and the courage to embrace joy despite past hurts.

August Boatwright

August serves as the wise mentor of the novel, embodying the divine feminine and the nurturing spirit of the beekeeping community. 

Her patient guidance helps Lily navigate her past and embrace her future, offering lessons in love, loss, and the power of storytelling. August’s role transcends that of a surrogate mother, as she introduces Lily to a broader understanding of family, community, and personal strength.

Zachary Taylor

Zach’s ambitions and relationship with Lily challenge the societal norms of their time, offering a vision of hope and change. 

His determination to overcome racial barriers and pursue his dreams inspires Lily, emphasizing the novel’s message of resilience, the power of aspiration, and the importance of supporting one another’s goals and identities.

May Boatwright

May’s character is a poignant embodiment of empathy and the toll of collective grief. Her sensitivity to the pain of the world around her culminates in a tragic conclusion, serving as a stark reminder of the novel’s deeper themes of loss, sacrifice, and the need for communal support in the face of overwhelming sorrow.

1. The Quest for Maternal Love and Identity

Central to Lily Owens’ journey is her deep yearning for maternal love, a quest that propels her story forward and shapes her interactions with the world around her. 

This theme is not merely about the absence of a biological mother but also explores the universal search for nurturing, understanding, and acceptance. As Lily navigates her life without her mother, she encounters various forms of maternal love—from Rosaleen’s protective care to the Boatwright sisters’ collective nurturing. 

Through these relationships, Lily’s understanding of motherhood expands beyond biological ties to encompass a broader, more inclusive notion of maternal love. 

This search also ties into Lily’s quest for identity, as understanding her mother’s past becomes crucial to forging her own sense of self.

2. The Impact of Racism and the Civil Rights Movement

Set against the backdrop of the 1960s South, the book delves into the racial tensions and the civil rights movement’s burgeoning impact on society. 

The novel does not shy away from depicting the harsh realities of racism, as seen through Lily’s and Rosaleen’s experiences and the broader societal context they inhabit. However, it also offers a nuanced exploration of race relations, presenting Tiburon and the Boatwright sisters’ home as a microcosm where racial barriers are, to some extent, transcended. 

Through this setting, Kidd examines the possibilities for empathy, understanding, and solidarity across racial divides, while also acknowledging the deep scars and ongoing struggles against racism.

3. Spirituality and the Divine Feminine

Another profound theme in the novel is the exploration of spirituality, particularly through the lens of the divine feminine. 

The presence of the Black Madonna, represented both in the photograph that guides Lily to Tiburon and in the figure of Our Lady of Chains, serves as a powerful symbol of feminine strength, resilience, and grace. 

This theme is intricately linked with the characters’ personal growth and their search for meaning in a tumultuous world. 

Through the practices and beliefs surrounding the Black Madonna, the novel celebrates the divine feminine as a source of inspiration , healing, and empowerment, offering a counterpoint to the patriarchal values dominating the characters’ external world.

Final Thoughts

“The Secret Life of Bees” is a beautifully crafted narrative that touches on deep themes of loss, race, family, and healing. 

Sue Monk Kidd uses the rich symbolism of beekeeping to explore the complexities of human relationships and the journey towards self-acceptance. The novel is a perfect reminder of the importance of confronting our pasts and the redemptive potential of embracing our shared humanity. 

Through Lily’s eyes, we are invited to reflect on our own journeys and the universal quest for belonging and purpose.

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The Secret Life of Bees Essays

During the book The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, the reader is able to see some of the many unique values or characteristics that Lily, the main character, holds. Even in the early stages of this book one is able to see Lily’s character traits, such as, her low self-worth and esteem, her...

Set in the American South in 1964, the year of the Civil Rights Act and intensifying racial unrest, Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees is a powerful story not simply about bees, but of coming-of-age, of the ability of love to transform our lives, and of the often unacknowledged longing for...

Written by Sue Monk Kidd the novel "The Secret Life of Bees" traces the life of a 14 year old girl searching for love and care. The story begins in a peach farm in Sylvan, South Carolina but travels toward and ends in Tiburon, South Carolina. The city of Tiburon unleashes many truths that lily has...

"The Secret Life Of Bees" Have you ever discovered something that changed everything you thought when you were growing up? Lily Owens did. In The Secret Life Of Bees though, she was in for a rude awakening. Throughout this story we follow Lily as she discovers things about her past as she sets out...

As humans, we tend to believe we are far superior to all other creatures, that we have nothing in common with anything thought of as ‘below us’. We are very wrong in thinking that. In the novel the Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, it is proven that though we do have differences, we are not so...

Kathy Holcomb Prof. Robert Weber English 112 April 14, 2009 The Secret Life of Bees Critical Essay Sue Monk Kidd has carefully crafted a book rich in symbolism with special emphasis on bees. Each section’s heading features the inner workings of this communal society (Emanuel, Catherine, B. 3). An...

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Finding Her Queen "New beekeepers are told that the way to find the elusive queen is by first locating her circle of attendants. " (57) This quote is at the beginning of chapter three and not only foreshadows many things to come, but within the quote, two of the novel’s main metaphors are mentioned...

1 269 words

The Secret Life of Bees The Secret Life of Bees is a fantastic book for young adult readers. The text is not too difficult, but has moral values that can, and should be shared. The story revloves around a girl named Lily Owens, who runs away from her abusive father with her nanny. Lily is a...

In Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, August acts as the unorthodox religious leader of the Daughters of Mary and contributes to Lily’s character and growth. August proves to be a leader, and a positive influence towards Lily in every action she performs. She welcomes Lily, a white girl...

The Secret Life of Bees Essay “There is nothing perfect, there is only life,” is one of the most inspiring aphorisms that August uses in the book The Secret Life of Bees. August says this to Lily to teach her about life and how it is not perfect. This lesson is shown in many ways, one being when...

Secret Life of Bees Book Journal Chapter 1 Lily Owens is lying in her bed watching bees squeeze in and out of cracks in her walls. She thinks about her mother, who died when Lily was a child. She also thinks about Rosaleen, a black woman who looks after her and her father, T. Ray. When the bees...

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I read “The Secret Life of Bees” and the main character is Lily Owens. Lily Owens is a 14 year old girl who runs away from her abusive father because he treats her very badly, and because he lies to her about her past. Lily’s mother died when she was just 3 years old, and Lily hardly remembers...

SECRET LIFE OF BEES – REVISION NOTES Central Characters Lily Melissa Owens Lily is a fourteen-year-old girl whose mother died when she was four years old, an accident that Lily feels she was responsible for. She dresses in clothes she made in home economics. She is not a popular person in school...

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Some girls grow up without a mother, but they don’t know how lucky they are that they don’t have to live with the feeling of guilt and remorse that Lilly Owens has to live with everyday. Everyday, since the age of four, Lilly has to deal with the regret of killing her own mother, Deborah. On...

English 9- CPA 9/13/10 The Secret Life of Bees Sue Monk Kidd “In a matter of seconds I knew exactly what I had to do-leave. I had to get away from T. Ray, who was probably on his way back this minute to do Lord-knows-what to me. ” (p. 41). When people come of age, they follow through with their...

"The Secret Life of Bees uses the Black Madonna as an important symbol of women leadership. As August tells Lily, "Our Lady is not some magical being out there somewhere, like a fairy godmother. She's not in the statue in the parlor. She's something inside you" (Kidd, 288). This statement is the...

Jackie Yets 3/21/11 Per. 6, English H2/SP Secret Life of Bees Research Paper While one reads the Sue Monk Kidd novel, The Secret Life of Bees, an enigma acquainted with the book is why the Black Madonna of Breznichar in Bohemia is used as opposed to a white Virgin Mary. With the story taking place...

Throughout maturity, women commonly experience hatred towards a number of different parts of life. Society sets high expectations for everyone, and when humans experience something against their morals they are often flooded with hatred. However, one must learn to hate in order to feel the true...

The Secret Life of Bees Assignment The Questioner Why did August paint the house pink? When may and August we're at the paint store May saw the colour and loved it August thought it was the tackiest color she had ever seen, but decided to paint the house pink because it made May happy. Why does...

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Essays on The Secret Life of Bees

The Secret Life of Bees is an important and thought-provoking novel that explores themes of family, race, and female empowerment. Writing an essay about this book can help you delve deeper into its meaning and significance.

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The secret life of bees.

• 1) The Secret Life of Bees explores the power of female relationships in overcoming adversity.

The Maternal Themes in "The Secret Life of Bees"

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Lily's Journey of Love, Awareness, and Remission in The Secret Life of Bees

A study of the theme of pervasive racism as illustrated in the secret life of bees, analysis of characters in the secret life of bees, the nature of grief in sue monk kidd’s the secret life of bees, let us write you an essay from scratch.

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1964 Insights: an Argument Against The Use of a Different Era When Setting The Secret Life of Bees

The monomyth notion in the secret life of bees by kidd, a similarity of characters in two different books, symbolism in "the secret life of bees": unveiling deeper meanings.

November 8th 2001

Sue Monk Kidd

Historical Fiction

Lily Melissa Owens, T. Ray Owens, Deborah Fontanel Owens, Rosaleen Daise, August Boatwright, June Boatwright, May Boatwright, Zachary "Zach" Taylor, Neil, The Daughters of Mary

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The Secret Life of Bees

By sue monk kidd, the secret life of bees study guide.

The Secret Life of Bees is Sue Monk Kidd 's first novel, following several acclaimed works of nonfiction. The novel follows Lily Owens in the summer of 1964 in South Carolina. On a quest to discover her mother's past, Lily travels to a honey farm in Tiburon, South Carolina. There she discovers the Boatwrights in a fabulous world of beekeeping, spirituality, and obsession with honey. Lily discovers more about herself, her mother, and society than she could have imagined before she began her journey. She learns about the power of females not only as individuals but also as they work collectively.

In an interview with La Vie en Rose , Kidd confesses that very little of Lily's existence relates to her own childhood. She insists that her father is the exact opposite of T. Ray, and she adds that while Lily merely wanted to go to charm school, Kidd actually did go. Kidd did, however, grow up in the South in the 1960s, giving her a sense of the paradoxes of the region. While Kidd insists that none of the characters in the novel is based on any specific person in her life, she acknowledges that at times people she knew speak through her characters.

The novel began as a short story that Kidd wrote in 1993. Several years later, she began a three-year process of converting the short story into a novel. To inspire her creativity, Kidd put together a collage of photos that she thought would relate to the plot of the novel. Though she was not exactly sure how she would connect all of the photos, she included a pink house, three African American women, and a wailing wall.

In order to write the book, Kidd also spent extensive time in a honey house and observing beekeepers. Kidd told BookPage that these experiences were necessary to create the sensory stimulation in the novel. "I could never have gotten that from a book. The fear and delight of all that and the sounds of it," she says. Kidd developed the figure of Our Lady of Chains from a statue that she discovered on a trip to a South Carolina monastery. She told BookPage that she was captivated by the story of a masthead of a woman that resurfaces from the depths of the sea.

A New York Times bestseller, The Secret Life of Bees earned tremendous acclaim from a variety of publications and endorsements from numerous novelists. A British publication, Woman and Home , discussed the book as a "superb rites of passage novel." Susan Isaacs, author of Long Time No See , called The Secret Life of Bees "compulsively readable." The book was awarded the Literature to Life Award, and an excerpt from the novel was included in Best American Short Stories .

The book also has been developed into a film adaptation released in October 2008. The film stars Dakota Fanning as Lily Owens, Queen Latifah as August Boatwright , and Alicia Keys as June Boatwright .

The Secret Life of Bees Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for The Secret Life of Bees is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

what happened when shoe arrived at the jail with lily and rosaleen

Franklin hit Rosaleen with his flashlight.

why were bits of paper stuck in the stone wall

It was May's way to dealing with suffering. Whenever May Boatwright hears about something tragic in the world, she writes it down on a piece of paper and slips the paper into the cracks of a stone wall near her house.

Lily finds herself making choices based on signs she interprets, what is she trying to decide based on seeing the crop duster flying over the tops in Tiburon?

In this scene, Lily is trying to decide whether or not she should remain living in an uncertain world filled with questions and fear... or move on... begin her journey of personal identity and self discovery. The flight of the crop-duster serves...

Study Guide for The Secret Life of Bees

The Secret Life of Bees study guide contains a biography of Sue Monk Kidd, literature essays, 100 quiz questions, major themes, characters, a glossary, and a full summary and analysis.

• About The Secret Life of Bees
• The Secret Life of Bees Summary
• Character List

Essays for The Secret Life of Bees

Literature essays on The Secret Life of Bees are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd.

• The Concept of Monomyth in Kidd's Secret Life of Bees
• The Role of Nature in The Secret Life of Bees
• Mother Figures in The Secret Life of Bees
• Pervasive Racism in The Secret Life of Bees
• Love, Forgiveness, Enlightenment: Lily's Journey in The Secret Life of Bees

Lesson Plan for The Secret Life of Bees

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to The Secret Life of Bees
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• The Secret Life of Bees Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for The Secret Life of Bees

• Introduction

The Secret Life of Bees

The world’s leading expert on bee behavior discovers the secrets of decision-making in a swarm

Carl Zimmer

On the front porch of an old Coast Guard station on Appledore Island, seven miles off the southern coast of Maine, Thomas Seeley and I sat next to 6,000 quietly buzzing bees. Seeley wore a giant pair of silver headphones over a beige baseball cap, a wild fringe of hair blowing out the back; next to him was a video camera mounted on a tripod. In his right hand, Seeley held a branch with a lapel microphone taped to the end. He was recording the honeybee swarm huddling inches away on a board nailed to the top of a post.

Seeley, a biologist from Cornell University, had cut a notch out of the center of the board and inserted a tiny screened box called a queen cage. It housed a single honeybee queen, along with a few attendants. Her royal scent acted like a magnet on the swarm.

If I had come across this swarm spread across my back door, I would have panicked. But here, sitting next to Seeley, I felt a strange calm. The insects thrummed with their own business. They flew past our faces. They got caught in our hair, pulled themselves free and kept flying. They didn’t even mind when Seeley gently swept away the top layer of bees to inspect the ones underneath. He softly recited a poem by William Butler Yeats:

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,  And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

A walkie-talkie on the porch rail chirped.

“Pink bee headed your way,” said Kirk Visscher, an entomologist at the University of California, Riverside. Seeley, his gaze fixed on the swarm, found the walkie-talkie with his left hand and brought it to his mouth.

“We wait with bated breath,” he said.

“Sorry?” Visscher said.

“Breath. Bated. Over.” Seeley set the walkie-talkie back on the rail without taking his eyes off the bees.

A few minutes later, a honeybee scout flew onto the porch and alighted on the swarm. She (all scouts are female) wore a pink dot on her back.

“Ah, here she is. Pink has landed,” Seeley said.

Pink was exploring the island in search of a place where the honeybees could build a new hive. In the spring, if a honeybee colony has grown large enough, swarms of thousands of bees with a new queen will split off to look for a new nest. It takes a swarm anywhere from a few hours to a few days to inspect its surroundings before it finally flies to its newly chosen home. When Pink had left Seeley’s swarm earlier in the morning, she was not yet pink. Then she flew to a rocky cove on the northeast side of the island, where she discovered a wooden box and went inside. Visscher was sitting in front of it under a beach umbrella, with a paintbrush hanging from his lips. When the bee emerged from the box, Visscher flicked his wrist and caught her in a net the size of a ping-pong paddle. He laid the net on his thigh and dabbed a dot of pink paint on her back. With another flick, he let her go.

Visscher is famous in honeybee circles for his technique. Seeley calls it alien abduction for bees.

As the day passed, more scouts returned to the porch. Some were marked with pink dots. Others were blue, painted by Thomas Schlegel of the University of Bristol at a second box nearby. Some of the returning scouts started to dance. They climbed up toward the top of the swarm and wheeled around, waggling their rears. The angle at which they waggled and the time they spent dancing told the fellow bees where to find the two boxes. Some of the scouts that witnessed the dance flew away to investigate for themselves.

Then a blue bee did something strange. It began to make a tiny beeping sound, over and over again, and started head-butting pink bees. Seeley had first heard such beeps in the summer of 2009. He didn’t know why it was happening, or which bee was beeping. “All I knew was that it existed,” he said. Seeley and his colleagues have since discovered that the beeps come from the head-butting scouts. Now Seeley moved his microphone in close to them, calling out each time the bee beeped. It sounded like a mantra: “Blue...blue...blue...blue...blue.”

When you consider a swarm one bee at a time this way, it starts to look like a heap of chaos. Each insect wanders around, using its tiny brain to perceive nothing more than its immediate surroundings. Yet, somehow, thousands of honeybees can pool their knowledge and make a collective decision about where they will make a new home, even if that home may be miles away.

The decision-making power of honeybees is a prime example of what scientists call swarm intelligence. Clouds of locusts, schools of fish, flocks of birds and colonies of termites display it as well. And in the field of swarm intelligence, Seeley is a towering figure. For 40 years he has come up with experiments that have allowed him to decipher the rules honeybees use for their collective decision-making. “No one has reached the level of experimentation and ingenuity of Tom Seeley,” says Edward O. Wilson of Harvard University.

Growing up in Ellis Hollow, in upstate New York, Seeley would bicycle around the farms near his house; one day he discovered a pair of white boxes. They each contained a hive. Seeley was seduced. He came back day after day to stare at the hives. He would look into the boxes and see bees coming in with loads of pollen on their legs. Other bees fanned their wings to keep the hives cool. Other bees acted as guards, pacing back and forth at the opening.

“If you lie in the grass in front of a hive, you see this immense traffic of bees zooming out of the hive and circling up and then shooting off in whatever direction they want to go,” said Seeley. “It’s like looking at a meteor shower.”

For his PhD at Harvard, Seeley took up a longstanding entomological question: How do honeybees choose their homes? He climbed into trees and poured cyanide into hives to kill the honeybees inside. He sawed down the trees and measured the cavities. Seeley found that bee hive hollows were very much alike. They were at least ten gallons in volume, sat at least 15 feet off the ground and had a narrow opening.

Seeley built 252 wooden boxes of different shapes and sizes and scattered them in forests and fields to test how particular bees were about these qualities. Swarms only moved into boxes that had the same features that Seeley had found in their tree cavities. “It’s really important to get them all right,” Seeley said.

The architectural tastes of honeybees are not mere whims. If honeybees live in an undersized cavity, they won’t be able to store enough honey to survive the winter. If the opening is too wide, the bees won’t be able to fight off invaders.

He took his research to Appledore Island because no native honeybees live here, and it has no big trees where the insects could make their homes. Seeley and his colleagues would bring their own honeybees and nest boxes. “This is our laboratory,” Seeley said. “This is where we gain control.”

In one experiment, Seeley set up five boxes of different sizes. Four of the boxes were mediocre, by honeybee standards, while one was a dream home. In 80 percent of the trials, the swarms chose the dream home.

Through years of study, Seeley and his colleagues have uncovered a few principles honeybees use to make these smart decisions. The first is enthusiasm. A scout coming back from an ideal cavity will dance with passion, making 200 circuits or more and waggling violently all the way. But if she inspects a mediocre cavity, she will dance fewer circuits.

Enthusiasm translates into attention. An enthusiastic scout will inspire more bees to go check out her site. And when the second-wave scouts return, they persuade more scouts to investigate the better site.

The second principle is flexibility. Once a scout finds a site, she travels back and forth from site to hive. Each time she returns, she dances to win over other scouts. But the number of dance repetitions declines, until she stops dancing altogether. Seeley and his colleagues found that honeybees that visit good sites keep dancing for more trips than honeybees from mediocre ones.

This decaying dance allows a swarm to avoid getting stuck in a bad decision. Even when a mediocre site has attracted a lot of scouts, a single scout returning from a better one can cause the hive to change its collective mind.

“It’s beautiful when you see how well it works,” Seeley said. “Things don’t bog down when individuals get too stubborn. In fact, they’re all pretty modest. They say, ‘Well, I found something, and I think it’s interesting. I don’t know if it’s the best, but I’ll report what I found and let the best site win.’”

During the time I visited Seeley, he was in the midst of discovering a new principle. Scouts, he found, purposefully ram one another head-on while deciding on a new nest location. They head-butt scouts coming from other locations—pink scouts bumping into blue scouts and vice versa—causing the rammed bee to stop dancing. As more scouts dance for a popular site, they also, by head-butting, drive down the number of dancers for other sites.

And once the scouts reach a quorum of 15 bees all dancing for the same location, they start to head-butt one another, silencing their own side so that the swarm can prepare to fly.

One of the things Seeley has been thinking about during his vigils with his swarms is how much they’re like our own minds. “I think of a swarm as an exposed brain that hangs quietly from a tree branch,” Seeley said.

A swarm and a brain both make decisions. Our brains have to make quick judgments about a flood of neural signals from our eyes, for example, figuring out what we’re seeing and deciding how to respond.

Both swarms and brains make their decisions democratically. Despite her royal title, a honeybee queen does not make decisions for the hive. The hive makes decisions for her. In our brain, no single neuron takes in all the information from our senses and makes a decision. Millions make a collective choice.

“Bees are to hives as neurons are to brains,” says Jeffrey Schall, a neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University. Neurons use some of the same tricks honeybees use to come to decisions. A single visual neuron is like a single scout. It reports about a tiny patch of what we see, just as a scout dances for a single site. Different neurons may give us conflicting ideas about what we’re actually seeing, but we have to quickly choose between the alternatives. That red blob seen from the corner of your eye may be a stop sign, or it may be a car barreling down the street.

To make the right choice, our neurons hold a competition, and different coalitions recruit more neurons to their interpretation of reality, much as scouts recruit more bees.

Our brains need a way to avoid stalemates. Like the decaying dances of honeybees, a coalition starts to get weaker if it doesn’t get a continual supply of signals from the eyes. As a result, it doesn’t get locked early into the wrong choice. Just as honeybees use a quorum, our brain waits until one coalition hits a threshold and then makes a decision.

Seeley thinks that this convergence between bees and brains can teach people a lot about how to make decisions in groups. “Living in groups, there’s a wisdom to finding a way for members to make better decisions collectively than as individuals,” he said.

Recently Seeley was talking at the Naval War College. He explained the radical differences in how swarms and captain-dominated ships make decisions. “They realize that information is very distributed across the ship,” Seeley said. “Does it make sense to have power so concentrated? Sometimes you need a fast decision, but there’s a trade-off between fast versus accurate.”

In his experience, Seeley says, New England town hall meetings are the closest human grouping to honeybee swarms. “There are some differences, but there are also some fundamental similarities,” he said. Like scouts, individual citizens are allowed to share different ideas with the entire meeting. Other citizens can judge for themselves the merit of their ideas, and they can speak up themselves. “When it’s working properly, good ideas rise up and bad ones sink down,” says Seeley.

Groups work well, he argues, if the power of leaders is minimized. A group of people can propose many different ideas—the more the better, in fact. But those ideas will only lead to a good decision if listeners take the time to judge their merits for themselves, just as scouts go to check out potential homes for themselves.

Groups also do well if they’re flexible, ensuring that good ideas don’t lose out simply because they come late in the discussion. And rather than try to debate an issue until everyone in a group agrees, Seeley advises using a honeybee-style quorum. Otherwise the debate will drag on.

One of the strengths of honeybees is that they share the same goal: finding a new home. People who come together in a democracy, however, may have competing interests. Seeley advises that people should be made to feel that they are part of the decision-making group, so that their debates don’t become about destroying the enemy, but about finding a solution for everyone. “That sense of belonging can be nurtured,” Seeley said. The more we fashion our democracies after honeybees, Seeley argues, the better off we’ll be.

Carl Zimmer ’s latest book is Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed .

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VIDEO: Dance of the Honey Bee

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