The Bee and the Flower Game

And an Endlessly Curious Octogenarian

Bernd Heinrich is a renowned naturalist who intensely studies the world around him. Though his 50-year career has spanned many countries within several continents, many of his observations occurred outside his cabin in the Maine woods. One of his earliest essays, What the Bees and Flowers Know (written in 1974), challenges long-held assumptions about Darwin's idea of natural selection.

A common misinterpretation of Darwin's notion of natural selection through survival of the fittest is that life is a struggle, and fitness means aggression and the ability to achieve an immediate advantage. Heinrich asserts that Darwin's law concerns outcomes from both cooperation and competition, where organisms have achieved necessary adaptations through interdependence. Interdependence evolves between individuals, or within species, and between species.

For all participants to derive maximum benefit in an ecosystem or relationship, it's necessary to adhere to a set of rules that limit how much one can benefit at the expense of the other. Without adhering to these rules, the game ends and all participants lose. The game might be between two people, employee and employer, different governments, or any arrangement of how people form relationships. The game is also played between humans and other species and between humans and all of the Earth's natural resources.

Heinrich notes that the nature of players' interactions is usually not apparent from observing single interactions; rather, it gets revealed over time. 

The bee and flower game is an excellent example Heinrich offers to exemplify a relationship that has evolved so that neither player has all the advantages or disadvantages.

The game played by the bee is to gain returns during foraging. If the bees are so successful that they deplete all the nectar, they will starve, and their population will necessarily stabilize or decline. The flowers' game is to provide food rewards, but not so much that the bees get satiated at one plant so that they visit and pollinate a large number of flowers. As a result, the insects living from the food (sugar and pollen) provided by the flowers are quite often in an "energy crisis."

The interdependence of organisms seldom involves exclusive dominance of one over another. For both to reap maximum benefits in the long run it is required that neither exploit the other fully at any one time. Each absorbs some measure of the "cost" in the relationship. The cost can be deferred, but it can never be eliminated, for doing so destroys the game.

The optimum state of the game of life, Heinrich says, involves reciprocity, the cost borne by all. If we insist on continual growth, the game's rules begin to erode. Heinrich warns that if we play the game of life too intensely by focusing exclusively on reaping short-term advantages, it is programmed to end (potentially abruptly). For example, we have played the game for far too long with nonrenewable resources, such as oil, natural gas, and coal, formed from the remains of extinct organisms. We have deferred the cost of this extraction but cannot do so indefinitely.

Unlimited exploitation of nonrenewable resources and transactional relationships characterized by domination will end with a crash. It is not sustainable. In his book ”Life Everlasting” on animal death and decay, Heinrich views humans as a plague that overruns the planet, upending the balance and pressuring the ecosystem due to its consumption and dismissal of regeneration. Without recycling, Heinrich states, all of life grinds to a halt. 

We are one of the few species, he believes, with the knowledge that we are part of something else, something greater than ourselves. One example of this is evidenced by the religions humans have created to seek life after death. Heinrich, too, believes that life is everlasting in nature, that our bodies break down and return to it. He looks forward to being buried on his land. In an interview I heard with him, he said the last thing he wanted was to be sealed off in a casket. "I want to be converted to the rest of life. I want to join the party!"

Heinrich's cabin has a table with words and dates carved into it, some left by his University of Vermont students who still come to the woods to study.  Here is one saying from the table carvings that he likes to quote:

Nature is God. The key to life is contact.

In addition to studying patterns in birds and insects, Heinrich studies their anomalies through which we might find a way to change patterns and offer renewal. Heinrich himself is one inspiring anomaly. This 83-year-old biologist lives off-the-grid with his partner, Lynn, on 640 acres in rural Maine, less than 20 miles from where he spent time as a boy on a farm. He owns a pickup truck but has no running water, phone service, or refrigerator, and heats his home solely with the wood he chops. 

Heinrich has a small solar panel to power his wi-fi router and laptop. The computer use is relatively recent, though he didn’t need one to publish hundreds of peer-reviewed papers, including one featured in the journal Nature, and to write nearly twenty books. 

In his 40s, he broke records in ultramarathons and still runs four miles daily over rugged terrain. His decades of observing bees and other insects gave him insights into storing and expending energy, which helped him train as an athlete. Heinrich admits he is not the runner or scientist he once was. Yet, he constantly watches wildlife in the woods, asking questions and seeking answers. 

He says that in this final era of his life, he wants to use it to learn to love more deeply. As a scientist, Heinrich spent many years loving the birds and insects at the expense of his human relationships. He has some regret that he did not give more time to these, as his fieldwork took him away days and months at a time. Now, Heinrich is grateful to have time for both the humans and birds he loves, tending to them on his beloved homestead in Maine.  

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