My scientific work focuses on understanding one of the five major transitions in evolution, namely the transition from independent organism to integrated group as the highest level of functionally organized entity. To understand this transition, we must solve two puzzles: “Why is there strong cooperation among the members of a highly integrated group?” and “How do the members of such a group work together as a united whole?” I have focused on answering the second question by investigating colonies of honey bees. A honey bee colony is a wonderful system for studying functional organization at the group level because it interacts with the environment as a coherent unit and it possesses numerous devices for social coordination, yet it is open to experimental analysis. To date, I have devoted most of my efforts toward understanding two crucial aspect of a colony’s physiology: the efficient acquisition of resources and the wise selection of a nesting site.

Seeley is committed to applying his knowledge and skills in investigating the biology of honey bees to solving practical problems in beekeeping. He has developed effective bait hives for trapping swarms of bees, found a feral population of honey bees with a stable host-parasite relationship with the parasitic mite Varroa destructor, demonstrated the importance to colony disease resistance and honey production of queens mating with genetically diverse drones, and evaluated the impact of plastic comb foundation on bee communication. He is currently investigating the value of small-cell combs as a non-chemical means of Varroa mite control.