Bees choke enemies to death

The new discovery raises the total number of ways bees use to deal with enemies into 3, including: burning - which means that bees commit suicide, heat others, and cripple their opponents.

"This is the first time we have understood the details of this strange defense strategy, where the honey bees Cyprian strapped to an Oriental wasp and made it suffocate," said Gerard Arnold from the Institute of Scientific Research. France said.

It has long been known that Asian honey bees kill enemies of hornets with heat-ball technique: a swarm of bees will cripple the poor, causing its body temperature to rise to death. . But honey bee Cyprian did not do that.

Alexandros Papachristoforou from Aristotle University in Greece and colleagues filmed video clips of honey bees killing hornets. They found honey bees pressed against the abdomen of the ill-fated, so arranged an experiment to verify whether honeybees are choking the enemy.

Honeybees are choking wasps, by covering the breathing holes on their abdomen.(Photo: Newscientist)

Hornets are breathed through breathing holes on the exoskeleton, covered by a structure called tergite. Using tiny tweezers, the scientists resisted the tergites always open with small pieces of plastic.

"At that time, honey bees took a lot of time to kill the wasps that had small pieces of plastic attached to the ones they didn't attach," the researchers found.

"In order to kill the horned wasps, honey bee Cyprian must develop a new strategy instead of the ball-heat method. They seem to have found the Achilles heel of wasps", The authors concluded.

T. An