Japanese bees have been captured using a new technique called “flapping” to protect their hives from intruding ants.
Bees have long used the force of their wing flaps as a defense mechanism that literally wards off ants.
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But the Japanese variety of honey bee displayed an entirely new behavior, never before recorded.
The behavior was captured by Yugo Seko, Kiyohito Morii and Yoshiko Sakamoto of the National Institute for Environmental Studies.
“I myself have not noticed this behavior during my approximately 10 years of beekeeping experience,” Sakamoto told New Scientist.
The team photographed the strike with a high-speed camera, showing the bees rotating their bodies and pushing the ants away with their wings.
The interaction was recorded in the video above.
The video shows three local species of ants walking towards the entrance of two Japanese bee colonies.
The effectiveness of their “wingbeats” varied depending on the species of ants the bees were fighting.
Japanese queenless ants and Japanese sidewalk ants were repulsed quite successfully, with half to about a third of the bee strikes flinging the ants away.
While Japanese “wing flapper” ants, a larger and faster variety, have not been as successful.
Experts believe that Japanese bees developed combative measures to protect their hives – but they are not sure why.
Morii added: “These defensive behaviors still hold many mysteries.”
Ants vs Bees
Ants can pose a significant threat to hives.
They are always looking for a warm, safe place to lay larvae and have a constant source of food – and beehives are the ideal place for this.
Although they can vary in their threat level, some ant species can bite or even kill worker bees.
They also eat bee larvae and can quickly take over entire hives, which can lead to the collapse of a weak bee colony.
That is, if the bees can’t fight off an invasion.
Bees have developed a fan defense mechanism that can ward off ants.
But the newly discovered “flapping” method may be a more efficient option, researchers suggested.
This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story
