Kubernet-Bees: How Bees Solve Problems Of Distributed Systems

The presentation discusses the similarities between honeybees and distributed systems, particularly Kubernetes, and how beekeeping practices can provide insights for managing and operating these systems.

• The presentation uses honeybees as a metaphor for distributed systems, particularly Kubernetes, to illustrate similarities in behavior and organization.
• Beekeeping practices, such as using signals and observability, can provide insights for managing and operating distributed systems.
• The role of the beekeeper in managing a hive is similar to that of an operator in managing a Kubernetes cluster.
• Beekeeping practices can benefit from automation and better observability, similar to how these practices are emphasized in managing distributed systems.

The presenter, who is a beekeeper, explains how bees can be caught by simply picking them off and how marking bees with antennas is a common process using a glue that does not harm the bees. The presenter also notes that beekeeping is a very manual process, unlike managing distributed systems which emphasizes automation and observability.

Many CNCF participants use bees as logos (e.g. eBPF, Cilium, GiantSwam, Honeycomb). This is no coincidence; the two worlds have more in common than you might think. Honey bees are social animals which operate as a distributed system. As experienced beekeepers and cloud-native engineers, the similarities between bees and Kubernetes are fascinating. Bee hives autoscale, self-heal, have message passing mechanisms, service discovery, and RBAC. For bee colonies, these are fundamental processes which must be cost-effective. This talk is an introduction to the fascinating world of honey bees, explains how bees have solved problems we face on a daily basis as Kubernetes users and gives an outlook on features that are missing from Kubernetes which bees support today.