

Mobs of honeybees kill hornets by asphyxio-balling (2007) - networked
http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2007/09/19/mobs-of-honeybees-kill-hornets-by/

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tw04
If these things make it out of the region __(To the Americas), we 're in
trouble. A handful of them can decimate a honeybee hive in a matter of hours.
Western honeybee's have no chance.

Completely off-topic, but a relationship like this makes you really wonder how
we got to where we are today, and if we aren't literally the only life in the
universe. The fact these honeybees figured out they could swarm these hornets
and kill them is almost unfathomable. And then to pass on the knowledge to
others? Mother nature is frigging amazing.

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tritium
As eusocial creatures, the bees don't precisely "learn" this sort of thing, or
pass information on by "teaching" other bees to coordinate this sort of
behavior.

It's an instinctive reaction, deeply ingrained in the surviving lineage of the
bees that react like that, because all of the others were culled against, and
eaten voraciously.

With bees, the only creature that should be regarded as having any degree of
agency is the queen, and all others are to be regarded as appendages. Flying,
autonomous phantom limbs.

The behavior of the collective is guided by pheremones, and when sensed, the
subjects of the queen must react reflexively to the varying scents of the
hive. Failing to react appropriately to the ambient chemical signals of the
hive, for bees, is like being born physically deformed or mentally handicapped
for humans, and the unfit would not survive in the wild. The queen's colony
must hold her aloft, as assuredly as our own legs must carry us over terrain,
and our hands must pick food up and place it in our mouths.

This highly specific reaction to the giant wasps probably emerges the same way
aversion or attraction to flavors and smells arise. Those that cannot taste a
fatal poison, will mistakenly eat it and not reject tainted food.

The way these bees react to the hornets, without the use of stinging, and
instead restraining their predator cooperatively, is probably driven by the
smell of the hornets. I can't really fathom how a reaction like that works,
but the hornet species must have killed so many bees, single-handedly, that
they selectively bred the survivors capable of stopping them, sort of the same
way we're inadvertently creating antibiotic resistant viruses.

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roflmyeggo
Amazing how quick the honey bees respond in unison to attack the hornet.

Even more amazing that the honey bee can withstand temperatures up to 118
degrees F, just 3 degrees higher than the hornet, and yet they still manage to
use heat as a means of attack.

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cperciva
It wouldn't matter even if the bees could only survive lower temperatures than
the hornet -- bees are expendable if it allows the hive to survive.

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x3n0ph3n3
Too bad the linked YouTube video has been marked as private.

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dubyah
I'm assuming this is the same video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuAfbt8-7VE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuAfbt8-7VE)

~~~
ccvannorman
yep, that's a ball of angry, smother-happy bees all right.

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venning
Relevant comic from The Oatmeal:
[http://theoatmeal.com/comics/bees_vs_hornets](http://theoatmeal.com/comics/bees_vs_hornets)

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jzig
Interesting source just above the <head>.

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venning
Thank you for pointing that out; I would never have seen it.

