Quotes from Thomas D. Seeley

By operating without a leader the scout bees of a swarm neatly avoid one of the greatest threats to good decision making by groups: a domineering leader. Such an individual reduces a group's collective power to uncover a diverse set of possible solutions to a problem, to critically appraise these possibilities, and to winnow out all but the best one.

Thus for some 4,400 years the people living in closest association with honeybees have focused on devising housing arrangements for bees that serve human purposes and have largely ignored what the bees' themselves seek in a home.