Negative-sum games

When Vespa soror — giant hornets found in parts of Asia — attack a honeybee hive, they kill as many bees as possible, decapitating them and scouring the hive to harvest their young.

To protect their hives from such a catastrophe, some species of honeybees have developed an arsenal of defensive techniques. They may forage for other animals’ feces and place it at their nest’s entrance to repel predators, a tactic called “fecal spotting.” Or, in a technique known as “balling,” a cluster of honeybees may engulf a hornet, vibrate their flight muscles and produce enough heat to kill the enemy.

Now, a new study published in Royal Society Open Science says honeybees have another defense: screaming.

More precisely, the bees in the study produced a noise known as an “antipredator pipe” — not something that comes out of their mouths, but rather a sound they produce by vibrating their wings, raising their abdomens and exposing a gland used to release a certain kind of pheromone.

Here is the full story.

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