Source: Honey Bees Use a Clever Tool to Fight Off Giant Hornets
If you want to fend off giant hornets, it helps to have something really repulsive at your front door. https://818c139fe958831d77ea3ae40bf410b9.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
Clever Asian honey bees (Apis cerana) use animal feces as a tool to defend their hives from giant hornet attacks. Researchers have watched the bees forage for animal dung, carry it home, and then apply it around the entrance to their nests.https://818c139fe958831d77ea3ae40bf410b9.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
Their findings, which were recently published in the journal PLOS ONE, documents the behavior for the first time.
“It turns out that by plastering animal dung around colony entrances, Asian honey bees are able to repel hornets from their nest entrances. The hornets are less likely to try to break into the colonies by landing and chewing at their entrances in a multiple-hornet attack, which is the most deadly kind of hornet attack that honey bees experience,” lead researcher Heather Mattila, Wellesley College associate professor of biological sciences, tells Treehugger.
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