Honeybees, increasingly under attack by so-called murder hornets in parts of the U.S., have unique survival strategies, including a frenetic warning signal that triggers defensive moves, which has now been documented by scientists for the first time.
They descend en masse after a scout has identified the target hive, killing the defending adult bees, occupying their nest and harvesting the bees' brood to feed to their own young. The marauders can decimate a hive in hours.
She described the warning signal, known as an "antipredator pipe," as harsh and noisy, with different durations and pitches similar to the shrieks, screams and panic calls used by mammals like primates and meerkats when they are afraid. "Our study showed that the bees didn't make the sound if there weren't any hornets. It was made very infrequently in response to smaller hornets, a bit more often if the bees smelled a giant hornet , and they made them by far the most when a giant hornet was directly outside of their nest," Mattila said via email.
These include strategies such as dung spotting -- when bees collect animal poop and apply it to the entrances of their colony to repel and confuse the hornets -- and swarming to neutralize the enemy, which is known as bee balling.
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