SCIENCE LAB SPECIAL : BEES BATTLE STRATEGY

 

Slap of honeybee's wings sends ant invaders scurrying. Asian honeybees have an impressive playbook of tactics to defend their hives :

Hypnotic shimmering waves to warn off predatory hornets; defensive balls to roast intruders alive with their body heat ; and, of course, their once-in-a-lifetime use of a stinger.

Add another weapon to the honeybee arsenal : wings. Scientists in Japan have learned that Asian honeybee guards use their wings to slap pesky ants.

Slow-motion video published with a study in the journal Ecology shows what happens when ants try to sneak into the hives entrance :  

The guard bee, angles up to the ant like a tennis player setting up a mean backhand, their wing smacks the ant so hard it tumbles end-over-end through the air as it plummets to the ground.

Researchers say wing-slapping seems to be a low-energy way for Asian honeybees to send petty thieves packing - while Japanese ants don't often kill honeybees, they can drain the nest's food reserves and gobble up the bees' protein-rich eggs.

To see how the strategy works, a team of researchers trained slow-motion cameras on guard bees as they were confronted with various ant species invading their hive.

The replays revealed the bees' wing-slaps sent smaller ant species sailing about half the time.

When a wing slap doesn't connect, the ants will occasionally try to bite the guard bee but generally '' just freeze,'' said Kiyohito Morii, an author of the study and behavioral ecologist. [ELIZABETH ANNE BROWN].