Summary Of Richard Seeley's Honeybee Democracy

Which set of individuals hold the power to both rule and govern a society, and how this power is acquired, is of crucial importance as it determines the overall way of life of a given group. Relations of power and politics are highly fluid, and can present themselves in a variety of divergent forms. A common form of political power relations is democracy. Democratic political rule involves a system of power relations vested in either elected individuals or the people themselves (Murrel, 2007). In contrast to democratic political rule is oligarchy. Oligarchic political rule is a type of government rule controlled only by a very small group of powerful individuals (Murrel, 2007). Oligarchic as well as democratic forms of political rule can be observed in not only human societies, but non-human societies as well. Contrary to popular belief, these forms of political power relations are not limited to human societies. The following paper will focus on how both democratic as well as oligarchic relations of power and politics are evident across species lines. Through the review of the works of Frans De Waal in his book Chimpanzee Politics (1989) along with those of Thomas Seeley’s Honeybee Democracy (2010), we can affirm this notion that non-human animals are in fact capable of vast forms of political participation. Although both authors focus on the politics and power struggles of specific non-human groups, including honeybees and chimpanzees, the authors discuss non-human animal political strategies, which oppose each other. De Waal (1989) constructs the political power struggles of chimpanzees as reflecting an oligarchic society, while Seeley (2010) argues that honeybees do in fact participate in a democratic political system of power. De Waal makes it clear that there exists to be a strong difference between both democratic leadership and intimidation through dominance, while Seeley highlights the minimization of the importance of a leader through the strong democracy of the honeybees. Simply the title of Seeley’s (2010) book “Honeybee Democracy” is enough to make us readers well aware that the ways in which honeybees undergo their daily political lives is through principles of democracy. …show more content…
Seeley (2010) immediately makes us readers mindful of the many choices honeybee’s are required to make throughout their daily lives in order for their democracy to unfold. These honeybee’s must decide, as a collective, when it is necessary to build more honeycomb, where and when to dispatch foragers, and most crucially, the site on which they are going to build their new home. This decision of where to build their new home is crucial to the hives all-around survival and thus the decision made must be a good one. To combat the vast importance of such a decision, the honeybee’s resort to a cooperative form of democracy. In regards to the bee’s necessary decision making processes, Seeley directly dispels the myth of the “Queen Bee” as a ruler. He dispels such a myth by stating that the Queen honeybee is not actually involved in the decision-making processes of the hive, she is essentially oblivious. The Queen bee is described by Seeley (2010) more as an “egg layer” rather than a “ruler”. All power the hive holds is vested in the workers (the honeybees) and all decision-making processes come straight from these worker bees themselves. The absence of an overall ruler makes Seeley’s argument that these honeybees are in fact a democratic society a strong one. There is no room for counter arguments of oligarchic or coercive practices if there exists to be no ruler enforcing such practices. This ruler-less society is one of phenomena in the eyes of human societies. How accurate and fair decisions can be made in the absence of a ruler is something very few human societies are capable of. Human societies participate in democracy through the election of our leaders and that is typically as far as our democratic participation goes. However, these honeybees (each and every one of them) are in fact active participants …show more content…
In his book Chimpanzee Politics, De Waal (1989) studies the lives of a number of chimpanzees being held in a captive enclosure. In part due to the confines of such an enclosure, the social lives of these chimpanzees are inflated. As a result, the chimpanzees display a large variety of both political and social behaviours. Both these political and social behaviours can be determined as fitting within the principles of oligarchic