The impact of communication and memory in hive-based foraging agents

Many hive-based agents, such as some bees, rely on memory and communication to aid in foraging. The benefits of these abilities seem obvious, but it is unlikely that they are beneficial in every environment. In this paper, we present the results of experiments examining the effect that environmental structure can have on the utility of communication and memory for hive-based agents, finding that there are some environments in which they do not contribute substantially to the agents' ability to survive.