Despite a lack of high-order communication, honeybee colonies efficiently coordinate search and foraging efforts across a large, dynamic search space. This natural emergent behavior, shaped by nature and evolution, is based on a combination of individual local search strategies, inter-agent communication via "waggle dancing", and collective behavior. Many parts of the real-life algorithm are unknown. We built a simulator to analyze honeybee colony foraging behavior using a variety of algorithms in several different environments. We examine both scouting strategies (as variants of randomized local search) as well as honeybee division of labor allocation in a variety of dynamic environments. (final paper)
(Note, a extension from this work was published at the Swarm Intelligence Conference (ANTS 2010) and won best the student paper award!)
