Especially if the family has as many as 10,000 members.

Honey bees make those decisions all the time, and the methods employed by these highly organized social colonies have long intrigued and mystified scientists.

How do honey bees, or any society for that matter, subvert the will of the few in the interest of the many? Or more precisely, as scientists have recently learned, how do bees make the right collective decision nearly all of the time, at least when it comes to picking a new home?

That may not seem like a particularly pressing question, but scientists want to know the answer because group decision-making processes affect all of our lives.

Whether it's a family searching for a new home, or the U.S. Congress trying to pass a budget, how decisions are made is a complex, and often wrong, process.