The structure of a honeybee swarm

When a honeybee colony reproduces by fission, a queen and several thousand bees take flight from their original nest and coalesce into a dense cluster suspended from a surface in nature (e.g., a tree branch). This cluster serves as a temporary home for several hours to days until the swarm finds a suitable nest site. During this time, the swarm actively buffers environmental perturbations like wind, rain, and temperature changes by adjusting its morphology. We study how the swarm's architecture enables it to sense and respond to environmental fluctuations. Using time-lapse X-ray computed tomography, we observe the swarm's three-dimensional architecture as it responds to ambient temperature fluctuations and find that bees self-organize into a thermally induced, liquid crystal-like state exhibiting long-range orientational order. Without central control, both local order and global morphological changes emerge as individual bees modify their physical bonds with neighboring bees in response to local signals and dynamic environmental cues.