Ultimate Swarms

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Swarms are one of the greatest

spectacles on earth.

At times horrifying,

and also a thing of wonder.

As part of the swarm,

the smallest of creatures can

become a force of nature.

I'm George McGavin, a zoologist

and explorer

and I'll be travelling the globe

to get right into the heart

of some of

the world's most impressive swarms.

HE LAUGHS:

I want to show you that far from

being the ultimate nightmare,

swarms are one of nature's most

ingenious solutions.

Ow!

Swarms are extremely powerful.

By joining together,

even the simplest of creatures can

achieve the impossible.

And by understanding how

swarms work,

we're gaining some fascinating

insight into our own lives.

My journey begins in North America,

in southern California.

I am hitting the highway in pursuit

of a swarm most sane people

would go out of their way to avoid.

At some point,

this little insect's sting might

have totally ruined your day.

Whoo, damn!

But in extreme cases,

this is a swarm that can kill.

I don't think you want to be outside

right now. There is a swarm of bees.

The honeybee.

A terrifying swarm,

but one that worldwide is worth

a staggering $180 billion a year.

Without them, over a third of all

the food we eat wouldn't exist.

And nowhere is the bee's pollinating

handiwork more crucial than here.

California.

More fruit and vegetables

are produced in this state

than anywhere else in America.

And bees are so important

to the process that every year,

farmers actually import almost

2 million hive-loads of them.

This is the perfect place to

understand the secret of the swarm

that takes group intelligence

to a completely new level.

To understand how it works,

I need to get right to the start

of the swarm, to the moment a queen

gathers a loyal team of workers

around her and goes house hunting.

Now, in this temporary

swarming state,

they are really non-aggressive

because they're not protecting

anything,

they're not protecting young,

or honey -

they are simply

protecting or shielding the queen

that's in the heart of their swarm

until a new home is found,

and they are so relaxed

non-aggressive

that I can actually put my hand

right into the swarm here

and just jiggle off a little

handful of bees.

Now, there's no way

I could do this with a normal hive.

It's only possible when they're

in this temporary swarming state.

Now, if I can persuade the worker

bees that I'm a queen bee,

they should swarm around me.

It's only going to be possible

because the swarm sticks together

by following chemical

signals called pheromones.

Looks have nothing to do with it.

It's an attraction so powerful

that the bees should be prepared

to ignore the obvious

and accept me as their queen.

To put it to the test,

honey bee expert Norman Gary is

giving me a queen bee makeover.

I'm going to put droplets

of a pheromone mix on your clothing.

That pheromone is the odour

that the queen bee emits

that makes the other workers swarm

around it.

These are all females, did you know

that? The females are now loving you.

Yeah.

Have fun, George! Hah!

'There's no backing out now.

'My only defence is a bit of insect

repellent on my face.'

I'm gonna start low, George,

because they tend to migrate up,

so here we go.

There you go.

'At this stage, it's hard to tell

'whether the bees are going

to stick around.

'And if I'm honest, right now,

I'm not sure I want them to.'

This is not funny, because...

It's in my eye, it's in my eye!

Argh!

Just relax.

I am relaxed.

I'm so chilled, I can't tell you.

It looks like the workers

have been fooled.

I'm really beginning to get

a sense of what it must feel like to

be the queen bee in the centre

of a massive swarm of bees.

And being part of the swarm is

starting to feel even weirder

than it looks. I can now feel

the weight of the bees on my chest.

There's a fair few of them

and collectively,

they're beginning to feel quite

heavy, like wearing a wet shirt.

The other thing that's quite

obvious is the heat.

Because I'm covered

in a layer of active bees

that are vibrating their wings,

they are generating

quite a bit of heat and that's being

transmitted to me through my shirt.

I can really feel like I'm wearing

a sort of woollen jumper.

'It's incredibly unsettling.

'I'm only safe from attack

because this swarm is in

'this temporary state,

but that needs to change.

'The bees face a critical

decision on where to set up

'their permanent home.

'It's vital they get it right.

'Get it wrong,

and the swarm will die.

'So how do 40,000 individuals reach

a unanimous decision?'

Although the queen is central

to the formation of the swarm,

it's not her that takes

any part in the decision

about where the swarm will end up,

where they'll have their new home.

But in order to show you

how that works,

I'm going

to have to move this swarm off me.

Wonderful. Perfect, perfect.

With the swarm now airborne,

they don't have long to make

a decision

and to see how they do

it, we've set up an experiment.

I've given the bees

a choice of three new hives,

only one of which is suitable.

Hive A has a small enough

entrance to keep out any predators,

but it's not big

enough for the swarm to grow.

Hive B is larger, so there's

room for the bees to expand,

but the entrance is too big to

protect them.

It all rests on hive C.

The one they should really

go for is this one over here.

It's the right size,

it's got room for growth,

the entrance hole is also

the right size,

so this, if I was a bee,

this is the one I'd be going for.

The question is,

will the bees choose the right one?

The first thing the swarm does is

send out the scouts.

It's their job to search for a new

home, inspect the premises,

and report back.

They're looking for a nice, roomy

hive, safe from predators

and south-facing, to make

the most of the early morning sun.

And after a thorough investigation

of all three hives,

it's time to head back to base.

What's really amazing about all this

is the way that the scout bees

communicate that vital information

back to the swarm.

It's all about the waggle dance.

With their best dance moves,

the scouts tell other bees which

direction to go.

The length of the waggling

gives them a distance.

One second of waggle equals half a

mile of flying. But that's not all.

The energy that they perform

that dance

indicates the quality of the house.

Look at this one here.

She is really going for it. This is

a really high-energy waggle dance.

Lots of enthusiasm.

She's doing it over and over again.

And that will tell

the rest of the swarm

that what she's found could be

the perfect home.

We used to think that the decision

was all down to the bees'

waggle dance.

When enough bees dance for the same

hive, a decision was made.

But recently, scientists realised

there was something much

more interesting

happening on the dance floor.

Some of the dancing bees were

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