And that’s how bee swarms argue, re: picking a new site. The process only includes an elite of the most experienced 3-5% of bees. That elite all starts out with no opinion, and then slowly some of them acquire opinions, at first directly and randomly via inspecting options, and then more indirectly via randomly copying opinions expressed near them. Individual bees may never change their acquired opinions. The key is that when bees have an opinion, they tend to express them more often when those are better opinions.
- Robin Hanson