How would you like to be literally cooked to death by bees?
By Clay Dillow Posted 03.14.2012 at 5:00 pm 17 Comments

That's One Seriously 'Hot Defensive Bee Ball' Ugajin A, Kiya T, Kunieda T, Ono M, Yoshida T, et al. (2012)
Bees are biologically interesting little creatures for a variety of reasons. There are their well-known talents, like communicating with the hive through dancing and producing the sweet, sticky stuff that goes great on sopaipillas. But they can also recognize human faces and solve some complex computing problems faster than computers. And now, thanks to Japanese researchers at the University of Tokyo and Tamagawa University, we are learning that bees can cook. Presenting: the “hot defensive bee ball.”

Japanese honeybees (cousin to the European variety) have a problem when it comes to the Asian giant hornet, a predatory insect that is much larger and quite aggressive toward smaller insects in the neighborhood. When Asian giant hornets threaten a Japanese honeybee hive, the smaller bees have developed a novel group behavior for dealing with their larger foe: they swarm around the hornet so frenetically that they actually cook the hornet inside of the moving pile of bodies.

This “hot defensive bee ball” behavior has been observed previously, but there are two interesting developments that are hot off the presses of the jounal PLos ONE today. Firstly, there’s the video below of the honeybees swarming an Asian giant hornet, which is pretty cool. Secondly, in studying the Japanese honeybees the researchers have detected a previously undiscovered kind of neural activity that takes place when the bees engage in “hot defensive bee balling.” It’s a kind of neural activity that isn’t seen in European honeybees, taking place in the higher brain center. We’re not sure exactly what that means yet, but if you’re a Asian giant hornet, take note.

17 Comments

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contra_dictions
03/14/12 at 10:29 pm

Fry them up, add a few chilies and we've got Thai food.

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NOM
03/14/12 at 10:45 pm

European bees do use this technique, but usually to kill an old or injured queen.

@contra_dictions
I tried deep fried bee larva in Thailand. Quite tasty.

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Robot
03/14/12 at 11:26 pm

Your above comment is odd and your icon. What is that thing?

.............................
Science sees no further than what it can sense, i.e. facts.
Religion sees beyond the senses, i.e. faith.

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Cookiees453
03/15/12 at 9:28 am

Jellyfish?

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ThisNameTaken
03/15/12 at 9:54 am

So next time somebody asks if you want to play some "bee-ball" you may just want to clarify if he's refering to playing hoops or playing with insects ;)

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NOM
03/15/12 at 3:42 pm

@Robot
If I told you, I'd have to kill you.

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Robot
03/15/12 at 10:40 pm

Nom,
You or anyone else can not kill one robot, we have parts on the shelf and back ups of ourselves. ;)

.............................
Science sees no further than what it can sense, i.e. facts.
Religion sees beyond the senses, i.e. faith.

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Robot
03/15/12 at 10:44 pm

You or anyone else can not kill one robot, we have parts on the shelf and back ups of ourselves. ;)

.............................
Science sees no further than what it can sense, i.e. facts.
Religion sees beyond the senses, i.e. faith.

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matsci1
03/16/12 at 10:02 am

I do not find this out of the ordinary. The community is protecting itself from an outside aggressor. That is nature

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boucher67
03/16/12 at 4:00 pm

I guess we can't say, "No Asian giant hornets were harmed in the making of this video.."

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BillyBlackhawk
03/16/12 at 9:41 pm

@Robot

NOM's icon is a nautilus.

@NOM

If I had to eat any insect, I'd go for Honey Ants. :)

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Robot
03/19/12 at 8:17 am

BillyBlackhawk,
Thank you. I did a google\image search of nautilus and now I can actually see something NOM icon now...

.............................
Science sees no further than what it can sense, i.e. facts.
Religion sees beyond the senses, i.e. faith.

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KuroHachi
03/19/12 at 4:07 pm

Fascinating...-Kuro-

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Robot
03/20/12 at 3:16 pm

What were really watching is a Japanese honey bee orgy on a poor unsuspecting Asian giant hornet. These female bees really have the hots for that hornet, woo woo!

.............................
Science sees no further than what it can sense, i.e. facts.
Religion sees beyond the senses, i.e. faith.

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johnsmith9875
03/21/12 at 5:50 pm

People power! Too bad we can't do that against Wall Street

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jayyung
04/12/13 at 2:39 pm

That's a zoomed in picture of a Nautilus.

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NOM
04/18/13 at 9:44 pm

It's not. But I'm still not telling.



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