Recipient of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Karl von Frisch trans­lated the meaning of bees’ waggle dances, by which a hive compares incoming reports from individual bees about nearby food sources to make collective decisions. According to Alex Wright in his book Glut: mastering inform­ation through the ages, other studies have shown that while a single bee can retain a piece of data for up to six days, a hive, through this collective inform­ation management enter­prise, can retain the same data for up to three months.