---
title: "The Ants and the Bees"
date: 2003-07-17
author: "Richard MacManus"
categories:
  - name: "ReadWriteWeb"
    url: "/category/readwriteweb.md"
tags:
  - name: "2003"
    url: "/tag/2003.md"
---

# The Ants and the Bees

I’m not usually one to quote long passages of other people’s writing, but I can’t resist quoting [Scoble’s post today about ants](https://web.archive.org/web/20040306094953/http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2003/07/17.html#a3814). In Robert’s vision, the ants represent Microsoft employees and the bees are third-party developers like [Marc Canter](https://web.archive.org/web/20040306094953/http://blogs.it/0100198). I love it when people use literary devices, such as [metaphor](https://web.archive.org/web/20040306094953/http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=metaphor), in a technical or business context. It encourages new ideas and makes us see things in a new light. It also reminds us not to take ourselves too seriously 🙂 Now, take it away Scoble:

> “I started having a dream that I was in an ant hill, and it was raining honey from above. The ants were harvesting the honey, and storing it away to use on future expansion projects.
> 
> The ants couldn’t see where the honey was coming from, but they knew it was “raining” regularly, so they were able to plan. Then I had a vision of the honey dripping from a bee hive up on a tree branch that was overhead of the ant hill.
> 
> What are the bee hives? Third party developers. In my vision, Marc was a bee. I was an ant. Now, in Marc’s post, he says that the ants figured out where the bee hives were, and they killed all the bees.
> 
> My vision is that it’s far better for the ants to leave the bees alone. Why?
> 
> Ever see an ant colony try to develop its own honey?”

*Originally published on ReadWriteWeb ([archived copy](https://web.archive.org/web/20020204040018/http://www.readwriteweb.com/2003/07/17.html#a81))*