{"id":1216,"date":"2021-11-09T00:37:40","date_gmt":"2021-11-09T00:37:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/animaltales.kenyoncip.org\/wp\/?p=1216"},"modified":"2021-11-09T00:37:41","modified_gmt":"2021-11-09T00:37:41","slug":"stung-on-the-neck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/animaltales.kenyoncip.org\/wp\/blog\/2021\/11\/09\/stung-on-the-neck\/","title":{"rendered":"Stung on the Neck"},"content":{"rendered":"\n[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ theme_builder_area=”post_content” _builder_version=”4.13.0″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.13.0″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_column _builder_version=”4.13.0″ _module_preset=”default” type=”4_4″ theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.13.0″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]

When you think about how honey bees defend themselves against predators, you might think of the classic example of a bear getting swarmed and stung by hundreds of bees. But how do they fend off smaller, more fierce foes, such as the Asian hornet, which have sting-resistant armor and are nearly three times as large as the worker honey bee.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The most common (and most clever) way these bees fend off these hornets is by using a technique called \u2018bee-balling.\u2019 Bee-balling is when hundreds of bees surround an invader (or sometimes their own queen, but that\u2019s a story for another day) and rapidly vibrate their wings. This raises the temperature of the hornet to a piping hot 40-47\u00b0C (104-117\u00b0F). Remarkably, some species of hornets are able to survive these high temperatures.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thankfully for the bees, the Asian hornet\u2019s armor may not be entirely as sting-proof as we had thought. Much like a knight in armor, there appears to be some exploitable weak spots in their defenses. The \u2018neck\u2019 (called the veracervix) of the Asian hornet (Figure 1) lacks the sting-resistance that the rest of the body has, allowing the honey bees to inject their venom into the enemy. And, as it turns out, bee-balling and the injection of venom work better in conjunction with one another.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In early 2021, Gu and colleagues discovered that the rate of hornet survival at bee-balling temperatures decreases from 75% to ~10% after just one sting. One idea put forward by the researchers is that the increased temperatures from bee-balling cause the venom to quickly spread throughout the hornet, becoming more deadly.<\/span><\/p>\n

In any case, this is amazing example of how honey bees use what they have available to them and exploit their enemy\u2019s weaknesses to take down enemies much larger than themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

References:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Gu G, Meng Y, Tan K, Dong S, Nieh JC. 2021 Lethality of Honey Bee Stings to Heavily Armored Hornets. Biology 10, 484. (doi:10.3390\/biology10060484<\/a>)<\/span><\/p>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you think about how honey bees defend themselves against predators, you might think of the classic example of a bear getting swarmed and stung by hundreds of bees. But how do they fend off smaller, more fierce foes, such as the Asian hornet, which have sting-resistant armor and are nearly three times as large […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":1217,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-animal-tales-for-kids"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/animaltales.kenyoncip.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/animaltales.kenyoncip.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/animaltales.kenyoncip.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/animaltales.kenyoncip.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/animaltales.kenyoncip.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1216"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/animaltales.kenyoncip.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1221,"href":"https:\/\/animaltales.kenyoncip.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216\/revisions\/1221"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/animaltales.kenyoncip.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/animaltales.kenyoncip.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/animaltales.kenyoncip.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/animaltales.kenyoncip.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}