What the honey bee can teach us about evolution-and ourselves.
How did the honey bee evolve into the complex colonial species that exists today-and what does its evolution have to teach us about our own species? In Honey Bee Society, entomologist Keith Delaplane uses the humble but charismatic honey bee as a model of social evolution to highlight the many parallels a social insect colony shares with humans and other organisms. Delaplane shows how social processes drive evolution-for honey bee colonies, humans, and other animals.
Each chapter spotlights a honey bee colony-level function such as group-level reproduction, task differentiation among cells, group decision-making, social immunity, defense behavior, senescence, anarchy, cancer, and more-all with stunning parallels to those of other organisms. These vivid comparisons, grounded in a practical context, emphasize how natural selection uses a common tool kit to solve similar problems across lineages.</
