Computational modeling of organization in honey bee societies based on adaptive role allocation

One of the unique features of the organization in honey bee societies is the ability to adapt to environmental circumstances in a highly decentralized way. This adaptation takes the form of changes in the allocation of bees to roles, whereby bees individually decide to take up certain roles that require attention. Within the domain of computational modeling of multiagent systems, a trend has developed to model such systems from an organizational perspective. Usually this is done by describing multiagent systems as organizations using structural elements such as roles and groups and behavioral properties of these elements, for example, expressions for role behavior, specifying how agents should behave once they fulfill a certain role. In dynamic environments, changes in environmental circumstances may require changes in such organizations as well. In this chapter, the change process as seen in honey bee colonies has been modeled by means of techniques from the domain of multiagent organizations. This results in an adaptive multiagent organizational model that is able to cope with changing environmental circumstances.