H.One in Asia It’s rough. Unlike their cousins in North America, where bee-eating hornets have only recently arrived, Asian bees are ruthlessly hunted by these giant wasps. Continuous attacks have kicked Asian bee evolution into gecko gear and as a result insects have developed a number of defensive tactics in addition to using their bites. First, Asian honeybees build their structures as g n with small entrances and rigid walls. They also aggressively taunt the hunter, warning them that they are being watched. And, if that doesn’t work, they can give the attackers a swamp in “bee balls,” which generate such heat that the hornets inside are cooked alive. Now, a study has been published Plaza oneHeather Matilla of Wellesley College Ledge in Massachusetts has shown that there is another trick on the other side of these bees: they trap houses with dung.
Vespa Mandarinia And Vespa Soror The cause is known as the Hornet of Murder. When the scouts of this breed find a hive of bees they descend and leave chemical markers near the entrance. The scouts then return with about 50 of their relatives to attack. Equipped with powerful jaws and stiff armor that make them resistant to bee stings, hornets surround the hive entrance and try to rip it off so they can push in their own way. They are attacked by guard bees, and sometimes successfully run away. But not always. Mostly, they go inside and once there, each horn kills thousands of bees. The slaughter has paved the way for the Hornets to collect the brood of larvae growing in the hive, the real target of the attack. This, they take back to the nest to feed their own young. It eliminates the hive.
Hornet attacks are destructive to etiquette, so beekeepers are keen to find ways to help expose these predators to their charge. When Guard Otis, co-author of Dr. Mattila of the University of Guelph in Canada, learned from a beekeeper in Vietnam that bees cling to their hive with water-buffalo dung globes after visiting Hornets, his curiosity was piqued.
As a result, Dr. Otis led Dr. Matilla and his colleagues to visit Vietnam, where they monitored the hive of 933 honey hives. They found that many of these beehives were covered in globes that actually looked like compost and most of them were clusters around the entrance to the hive. When they monitored the movements of the bees, they discovered that bees store buffalo dung, but they also regularly make globes from feces collected in chicken coops and from eagles kept in the outside of pigs. Further monitoring of the hive shows that bees quickly attach hundreds of fecal globes to their hive after horn attack.
Mark off
To see if this was the result of chemical marks, Dr. Mattila and his colleagues collected extracts from the hornets of the glands to conceal the substances involved. They then soaked some filter papers in the extract and placed bits of this material near the hive entrance. As a control, they also soaked some filter papers in ether, and similarly distributed them near the entrance to other hives.
Hornet Extra responded strongly. Within a day of its arrival, the hive members formed an average of 15 nearby globes. Ether asked an average of only two. This suggests that the bees are indeed strategically wise to sign Hornets, and are prepared for potential attacks accordingly.
To make sure the globes help the bees defend their hive, the team noted several attacks. They found that a well-globed up hive reduced the amount of time spent trying to break down by 94%.
Why fecal globes remove hornets. Dr. Mattila speculates that the dung contains compounds that are somehow antithetical to the Hornets. In particular, these will be protective substances synthesized by buffalo, pig and chicken eating plants. If that idea is really true, it seems that Asian bees have discovered an effective form of chemical warfare.■
This article appeared in the Science and Technology section of the print edition under the title “Uses of Chhabra”
