Japanese honeybees flap their wings to knock down ants that try to invade their nest.
Ants often invade honeybee hives to steal honey, prey on eggs, and kill worker bees. In defense, honeybees are known to fan their wings to blow ants away. Here, the researchers documented bees making contact with ants with their wings and physically knocking them out of the hive, a behavior that has never been studied before.
High-speed camera footage shows guard wasps near the entrance to the hive leaning toward approaching ants, then flapping their wings to change direction and escape. If they hit the ant, it’s blown away.
Many beekeepers seem unaware of this strategy, he said. Yoshiko Sakamoto. “I have never noticed this behavior in my nearly 10 years of beekeeping experience,” she says.
Sakamoto: Yugo Seko and Kiyoto Morii Researchers at the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Tsukuba introduced three species of native ants to the entrances of two Japanese honeybee hives (Honeybees) colonies and filmed hundreds of insect duels.
In most of these interactions, the bees hit the ants with their wings. But this defense doesn’t always work.Pristomyrmex punctatus) and Japanese street ants (Tsushima), the ants were blown away in about half to one third of the attempts. The feather swatter was much less successful against Japanese forest ants (Formica japonica), a larger and faster species.
Ants pose different levels of threat to bees, with some species biting or killing worker ants and others being less of a threat. Bees may have evolved to prefer the wing-flailing defense to avoid contact with more dangerous ants, but beating their wings may be a more efficient option against other species, the researchers suggest.
The team hopes to test this idea by mapping the bees’ responses to ant attacks. They also plan to study how the interaction between the bees and ants changes over time, and whether the bees’ wing-beating skills improve as they gain experience. “There are still many mysteries surrounding this defensive behavior,” Morii says.
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