An example of figurative language in public science discourse:
"These [signals] come from worker bees. There are two different professions, if you like. Profession number one is the lorry driver. They go out. They go to the flower. They collect the nectar; and they bring it back to the colony. And when they come back they are welcomed by those bees that receive the nectar load and then they process and they deposit the nectar load into a cell. And in case of a remarkable bounty, the finding of, say, a complete tree which is in complete blossom, that creates a queuing – those bees that came back with the nectar, they are desperate to pass it on to the second profession."
Professor Martin Bencsik (School of Science & Technology, Nottingham Trent Polytechnic) was being interviewed on an episode of BBC Inside Science
The professions of worker bees is introduced as a simile here (marked by the 'if you like'), but this is then used as an extended metaphor.
Read about examples of science similes
There is also possible anthropomorphism here, in describing the queuing (lorry driver) bees as being desperate (i.e., 'to get back out on the road again'? – a comparison with ambulance crews stuck waiting to hand over patients to overstretched hospital Emergency departments might come to mind for UK residents). The bees may well show behavioural traits which may suggest that we can best interpret their state in human terms as being desperate, but it is of course impossible to know how bees experience the queuing process and whether any experience they do have (could their queuing behaviors be instinctive and automatic, inherited because they best facilitate quick turn around, but without involving any kind of 'experience' for the bee?) are anything like those of a desperate person.
Read examples of anthropomorphism in science
