In our last meeting of 2015, we are delighted to welcome Honey Bee Biologist Dr. Tom Seeley. Dr. Seeley is well known for his scientific work focusing on understanding the phenomenon of honey bee swarm intelligence (SI), as researched in his book The Honeybee Democracy.

Our meeting will be a double feature! Dr. Seeley will present two back-to-back talks, which cover topics in his upcoming book release, Following the Wild Bees:

House hunting by honey bees: Part one, choosing the new home site
House hunting by honey bees: Part two, moving to the chosen site

Dr. Seeley received his undergraduate degree in chemistry from Dartmouth College. He received his PhD in 1978 from Harvard University, where he studied with Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson.  He held a postdoctoral fellowship in the Society of Fellows at Harvard until 1980, when he accepted a faculty position at Yale University.  He remained there until 1986, when he joined the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell University.  

In recognition of his scientific work, he has received the Alexander von Humboldt Distinguished U.S. Scientist Prize, been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, received a Gold Medal Book Award from Apimondia for The Wisdom of the Hive, and been elected a Fellow of both the Animal Behavior Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  His most enduring honor, though, is to have had a species of bee named after him: Neocorynurella seeleyi