Scientists abuzz over more efficient Web servers

Bryn Nelson Columnist

An intricate honeybee dance has generated a big buzz among scientists by serving as the model for an Internet server system that adapts in response to changing user demand.

By studying the famous honeybee waggle dance that communicates the location of top-notch nectar, researchers have designed a more efficient server system that also benefits Web surfers by cutting down on frustrating delays in accessing newly popular sites. Initial tests by collaborators at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the United Kingdom’s University of Oxford showed that the bee-like way of homing in on sweet spots improved a Web-hosting company’s revenue by up to 20 percent.

“It is amazing how inspiring the natural world can be,” said Craig Tovey, co-director of Georgia Tech’s Center for Biologically Inspired Design.

Tovey’s first honeybee revelation arrived in the late ’80s when a colleague told him about a National Public Radio spot featuring bee researcher Thomas Seeley, now at Cornell University. Tovey reasoned that the bees’ unusual communication system, with the waggle dance as its focus, might help him learn more about controlling groups of robots.

Instead, he found himself collaborating with Seeley to test how a honeybee colony allocated its foragers among different nectar sources at a biological station in New York’s Adirondack State Park. “It was one of the most wonderful, exciting weeks of my life,” Tovey said of the group’s “BYOB” outing, short for “Bring Your Own Bees.” (Seeley brought 3,000.)

The waggle dance
On a basic level, the honeybee’s dilemma is a tale of two flower patches. If one patch is yielding better nectar than the other, how can the hive use its workforce most efficiently to retrieve the best supply at the moment? The solution, which earned Austrian zoologist Karl von Frisch a Nobel Prize, is a communication system called the waggle dance.

“It’s basically a statement that says, ‘This is the kind of flower, and it’s in that direction and here’s how far away it is,’ ” Tovey said.

When a scout bee has discovered an attractive nectar source, it dances on the floor of the hive, waggling its body rapidly from side to side. Each element of the dance — including motion, scent and possibly even sound — gives eager followers clues to the nectar’s whereabouts.

The number of turns, for example, indicates distance, while the angle of the bee’s principal dance lines signals the proper flying direction relative to the sun. For particularly good sources, the bee may repeat the whole sequence several times so more workers can get in on the act. The moves are so telling, in fact, that researchers can learn the location of a flower patch simply by watching a dancing bee.

Tovey said his collaboration with Seeley demonstrated that the communication provides a “beautiful” feedback loop to prevent one flower patch from being abandoned while another is depleted. For a superior patch, more bees will shake it on the dance floor and recruit workers to join them. As the nectar level drops from all the hubbub, the bees take longer to fill up, delaying their repeat performances back at the hive. The drop-off in dance routines gives scouts returning from alternative sources a better chance to create their own dance fever and transfer worker allegiances. With the shifting allocations, the system continually equalizes itself and offers a steady stream of nectar.

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