Yes, that’s right. And we though it was just our mothers who had mastered the “smothering you to death” technique.
Not so.
Surprise Strategy: Bees Smother Enemies
Cyprian honeybees don’t smother their enemies with kindness—they just smother them to death, research now reveals.
This novel strategy has never been seen before in insects, “and probably in all animal species,” apidologist Gerard Arnold at the National Center of Scientific Research in France, told LiveScience.
Cyprian honeybees (Apis mellifera cypria) do possess stingers to defend themselves. However, their archenemy, the Oriental hornet (Vespa orientalis), is protected from such attacks by their hard body armor. The predatory hornets tend to attack bee colonies en masse in the middle of the autumn, explained researcher Alexandros Papachristoforou of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.
Previous studies revealed Asian honeybees can kill hornets by completely engulfing them, making the predators die from the heat inside the ball of bees—a strategy dubbed “thermo-balling.” […]
Now scientists find Cyprian honeybees can kill hornets by suffocating them, a strategy the researchers have dubbed “asphyxia-balling.”…”To kill the high-temperature-tolerant hornet, Cyprian honeybees have developed an alternate strategy to thermo-balling and stinging,” Papachristoforou said. “They appear to have identified the hornets’ ‘Achilles heel’ by asphyxiating the predator.”
Yeah, so there.
I always knew them Cyprian honeybees were kinky little devils.
So when can we bomb the Taliban & al-Qaida in Iraq with these bags full of “honeys??” Watch the cowards suddenly hide under the burkas!!(which actually look like bee keeper’s outfits) BOMBS AWAY!!!!