Asian honeybees nutrient what has been described arsenic a disturbing scream-like dependable erstwhile their hive is attacked by elephantine hornets
Life 10 November 2021By Carissa Wong
Giant hornets onslaught a chromatic bee hive successful Vietnam Heather Mattila/Wellesley College
A frenzied alarm awesome produced by a benignant of Asian honeybee during a elephantine hornet onslaught has been identified for the archetypal time.
Hornets are Asian honeybees’ astir devastating predators and tin hitch retired full colonies. Heather Mattila astatine Wellesley College successful Massachusetts and her colleagues recorded sounds wrong hives containing Asian honeybees (Apis cerana) arsenic they came nether onslaught either by a benignant of elephantine hornet (Vespa soror) related to the infamous “murder” hornet (Vespa mandarinia), oregon a smaller hornet taxon (Vespa velutina). The squad besides recorded sounds from the hives successful the lack of predators.
In total, the researchers captured astir 30,000 bee signals successful much than 1300 minutes of recording, from 3 beekeeping yards successful Hanoi, Vietnam.
By analysing pictures of the dependable patterns, the squad discovered that bees nutrient a antecedently undescribed acceptable of harsh and irregular noises that tin alteration rapidly successful frequence erstwhile elephantine hornets, but not smaller hornets, get astatine the hive. They named these signals “antipredator pipes”. No specified sounds were detected successful the lack of threats.
“I recovered it truly disturbing. When you analyse the recordings, portion of you is frightened for the bees, and portion of you is truthful excited for however antithetic these sounds were,” says Mattila.
The acoustic properties are precise akin to alarm shrieks and fearfulness screams made by different animals similar primates and birds, says Mattila.
Using cameras to movie the hive entrances, the squad recovered that the antipredator pipes seemed to rally much bees to the hive entrance. Once here, the bees placed much carnal dung astir colony entrances, a behaviour known to deter hornets. The accomplishment of smaller hornets didn’t pb to accrued dung-depositing by the bees.
The findings suggest antipredator pipes tin convey peculiar types of menace to different bees successful the colony, which “hear” the calls done vibrations successful their legs, and assistance enactment predator-specific defences.
The squad noticed that the bees raised their abdomens and buzzed their wings to marque the antipredator pipes portion moving astir successful what appeared to beryllium frantic paths.
In future, the squad hopes to play backmost the alarm signals wrong hives to amended recognize what accusation the bee screams convey and however idiosyncratic bees respond.
“This survey is of large worth successful that it scientifically demonstrated that honeybees person identified the attributes of their earthy enemies and evolved acoustic alarm signals,” says Masato Ono astatine Tamagawa University successful Japan. “It is besides a precise absorbing convergent improvement to amusement that it shares points with the acoustic properties of mammalian horror.”
Journal reference: Royal Society Open Science, DOI: 10.1098/rsos.211215
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