You can never tell when apparently blue-sky science will be useful, as biologist Thomas Seeley's career shows. His knowledge of honeybees, for example, helped to defuse a cold-war confrontation in the 1980s, when he showed that yellow dots on Thai jungle foliage were not residues of Soviet chemical weapons but bee shit. And he has run his own department by the rules that swarms use to select a new home. Honeybee Democracy describes Seeley's quest to understand collective decision-making in social insects and humans.
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