the.com/hive
a city of thousands with no mayor, running flawlessly on dance and pheromones
means A structure or colony where bees live and work together, or by extension any place buzzing with crowded, busy activity.
from From Old English 'hyf,' the name for a bee's dwelling, with relatives across the Germanic languages and possibly a deeper cousin in words meaning 'to cover' or 'arch over' — fitting, since the oldest hives were dome-shaped baskets. The sense of a frantically busy place ('a hive of activity') is a later figurative leap, borrowing the bees' famous industry as a metaphor for human bustle.
- thermostat
- Bees fan and shiver to hold 95°F year-round
- voting system
- Swarms pick new homes by competitive dancing
- architecture
- Hexagons use the least wax for most storage
- food math
- One hive's honey takes flights circling Earth twice
- the matriarch
- A queen lays 2,000 eggs per day
apis mellifera — western honey bee species, produces ~60 pounds of honey per hive annually
langstroth hive — wooden box design invented by lorenzo langstroth in 1852, most common commercial hive type
varroa destructor — parasitic mite that infests honey bee colonies, causing colony collapse disorder worldwide