New enquiry , published in the journalBehavioral Ecology and Sociobiology , shows that Asian Apis mellifera ( Apis cerana japonica ) do an act of incredible ego - ritual killing when confront with an unwished guest .
The Japanese giant hornet ( Vespa mandarinia japonica ) is a particularly tight marauder that can massacre as many as40 Asian honeybees in a single moment . During the autumn month , when the hornet are at workplace tending to their larvae , hive may have to withstand as many as 30 hornet attack a workweek . A bee ’s weapon - of - option – its stinger – is hopeless against the hornet ’s rigid exoskeleton , so the Asian Apis mellifera has had to devise a new tactic .
so as to go the one-year barrage of hornet attacks , the honeybee perform an strange but incredibly altruistic conduct lie with as “ hot defensive bee ball establishment ” . Hundreds of worker honeybee will teem the hornet while vibrating their backstage to amp up the heat . The entire process can go on for more than 30 minute , during which time temperature inside the ball can go up to 46 ° C ( 115 ° F ) . It is essentially death by heat as far as the hornet is concerned .
These defensive ball formations were originally line in 1995 , and since then , investigator have analyzedthe neural mechanismsbehind the sinful behavior . Now , a team of research worker led by Atsushi Ugajin , an entomologist at Tamagawa University , Japan , has shown that all this swarm and vibrating do at a enceinte personal price for the honeybees imply .
To find out what effect the orchis organization has on the Apis mellifera ' life , the investigator compare the survival of the fittest rates of participating Apis mellifera to those of non - participating Apis mellifera . All honeybees , regardless of what radical they fell into , were the same age at the experimentation ’s outset ( 15 to 20 day ) to keep thing fair .
The squad was also curious to see what would encounter when there was more than one onslaught , as there often is out in the wild . They notice that the honeybee involved in the formal forming in the first attack were far more potential to link up the testicle forming in the second attack . And while the researchers ca n’t say why this is for sure , they suspect this ego - give behaviour helps abbreviate the price that the ballock formation have on the dependency by throttle the number of individual honeybees call for in the demeanour .
To watch the bees in activity , check out this television :
[ H / T : New Scientist ]
