The enormous honeybee is native to south and southeast Asia, particularly within the forest areas of Terai in Nepal. These bees construct nests a couple of metres underneath overhanging cliffs, the place they’re typically uncovered to predators, significantly the Asian hornet.
Due to their predatory publicity, these bees are inclined to have an aggressive temperament, rapidly mobilising a swarm of defenders to repel any birds or mammals. What is especially attention-grabbing, is how they defend themselves in opposition to their foremost predators – wasps and hornets.
The Asian large hornet, for instance, is a infamous predator for honeybees, the place the queen hornet can develop as much as 5cm lengthy and destroy a hive in minutes by decapitating bees. This hornet kills as much as 50 folks a yr within the Japan with its painful and venomous sting, however the large honeybees have developed a couple of methods to ward them off.
One technique the bees have adopted is termed “heat-balling”, the place a gang of bees descend on an intruding wasp or hornet, vibrating their wing muscle mass and elevating their physique temperature to 45°C, which is deadly to wasps. The wasps primarily elevate their temperature to cook dinner the intruder.
One other attention-grabbing technique they’ve developed is extra avoidant and entails the enormous honeybee doing a “Mexican wave” the place lots of of particular person bees flip their abdomens upwards in a break up second, forming these wave-like patterns.
This shimmering wave is ineffective in stopping bigger predators reminiscent of birds, however subject observations revealed that this phenomenon is efficient in deterring wasps and hornets. ‘When the hornets have been nearer than the imply hovering distance, they withdrew from the nest in the midst of shimmering,’ an article printed within the Public Library of Science learn.
One other attention-grabbing statement is that when these employee bees elevate their abdomens, they launch a pheromone known as Nasonov, which sends a sign to different bees to remain collectively and never break rank.
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