Cyprian honeybees use a unique application of "strength in numbers" to suffocate one of their most dangerous enemies: huge invading hornets.
In late summer on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, Oriental hornets will invade honeybee hives (see a map of the Mediterranean showing Cyprus).
The hornets are three times the bees' size and have mandibles that can snap the smaller insects' heads off with a single bite.
Attacking hornets kill the hive's adult occupants and eat the bee larvae.
Every year beekeepers lose nearly a third of their colonies to invading hornets, said Alexandros Papachristoforou, who studied the bees for his doctorate at Aristotle University in Thessaloníki, Greece.
The bees' main defense—stinging—rarely works against the hornets, which are armored with tough plates of cuticle.
In a new study, Papachristoforou and colleagues suggest that when large numbers of bees mob a hornet, the tightly formed ball squeezes the invader until it can't breathe.
The team reports the discovery in this week's issue of the journal Current Biology.
Baked Hornets
Bee experts had already documented Asian honeybees mobbing Japanese giant hornets in a similar way.
Dubbed the "hornets from hell," a single giant hornet can slaughter thousands of honeybees within hours.
(Watch video of the bees battling the giant hornets.)
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