imagine we make contact with an alien species that’s like, vastly technologically superior, they could fucking kill us in a single shot if they really wanted to
and this species has never eaten salad before. and we show them salad and they eat it and they’re like holy living fuck this is tasty. and suddenly they’re offering us huge houses with all kind of advanced technological shit and incredible medical care and all the amenities and everything, with the only condition that we keep making salad for them.
and like, salad isn’t even hard to make. grab some plants, dump em in a bowl. it doesn’t have to be fancy salad, they’ll fall all over themselves for the most mediocre salad in the world. we can make so much salad that we’re practically drowning in it, even if we eat some of the salad ourselves. and in exchange we’re protected from danger, we have great living conditions, it’s basically paradise compared to life on earth
imagine
now realize that this is what bees have done to us
The giant bees have two languages. One is a sign language very similar to human sign languages, but with more hands, fewer fingers, and a hard-coded method of communicating distance (it’s basically exactly like the bee dance language, just done with the hands)
The other is a tactile language. This one is communicated using light touches with the antennae, similar to morse code with a few more components than dots and dashes. They use this tactile language to communicate with grubs, giving them their first taste of language by associating certain words with the experiences they can perceive, like being held or fed. This also becomes the grub’s first opportunity to understand its own body as nurse bees inform it what it may be feeling.
When adult bees emerge from the comb after pupating, they have near-complete adult faculties but cannot speak the full sign language, since obviously, they have never seen it and didn’t have hands before to speak it with. So for a couple years after emergence they rely on the tactile language, allowing them to function in a rudimentary way while they get a crash course in a full and complex language.
Being a grub, and being a new adult worker are both vulnerable times where they rely a lot on trust and care from their sisters, so the bees associate the tactile language with this vulnerability. Even in older bees it is the language of trust, care and closeness, they never stop using it.
If i remember correctly, they’re mini-swarming to warm that fucker up and make him die of heat stroke
They literally heat him up to about 1 degree less of the temperature that they can die from. Thank you college lol
Alright, this is really cute, but they’re not “avenging” anything. The scent of a killed honeybee makes the others go into defensive mode against the threat, that’s why they all start moving fast. Bees don’t exhibit care for each other.
And yes, they’re going to cook the hornet to death. They vibrate themselves and produce heat, and the hornet, trapped under their weight, slowly dies of heat stroke.
Just had a little look into it now and holy shit that an amazing idea. Talk about two birds one stone.
Now they use African honey bees, which are way more aggressive then the European honey bee. So the elephants have a pretty good reason for being afraid of them.
Now if you’ve ever been around / in countries with elephants you’ll know, that they are pretty damn destructive. They’ll destroy whole structures, and you’re pretty powerless to stop them. So the use of these bee hive fences is ingenious, and something I’m going to have to read a lot more on.
These are what they look like btw:
This is cool as shit and i love how they’re standing fearless next to African killer bee hives
GOD DAMN THATS COOL
‘killer bees’ are only aggressive if you threaten their nest – which elephants do by accident, since they are stompy guys who knock shit over all the time. i’m so glad people are finding a solution that doesn’t involve violence. elephants don’t want to ruin your things, they’re just enormous and easily spooked.
European honeybees have no innate defense against the hornets, which can rapidly destroy their colonies. Although a handful of Asian giant hornets can easily defeat the uncoordinated defenses of a honeybee colony, the Japanese honeybee has an effective strategy. When a hornet scout locates and approaches a Japanese honeybee hive, she emits specific pheromonal hunting signals. When the Japanese honeybees detect these pheromones, a hundred or so gather near the entrance of the nest and set up a trap, keeping the entrance open. This permits the hornet to enter the hive. As the hornet enters, a mob of hundreds of bees surrounds it in a ball, completely covering it and preventing it from reacting effectively. The bees violently vibrate their flight muscles in much the same way as they do to heat the hive in cold conditions. This raises the temperature in the ball to the critical temperature of 46 °C (115 °F). In addition, the exertions of the honeybees raise the level of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the ball. At that concentration of CO2, they can tolerate up to 50 °C (122 °F), but the hornet cannot survive the combination of high a temperature and high carbon dioxide level. Some bees do die along with the intruder, much as happens when they attack other intruders with their stings, but by killing the hornet scout, they prevent it from summoning reinforcements that would wipe out the entire colony.
Bad and Naughty Hornets will be cooked in the Ḅ̖͔͓̤̜̘̀͂ͮ͌͊̂ ͓̥̥̒ͭ̔̒Ẹ͎͎̫̠̞ͩ͒ ̲̥̦̲͒̏Ë̘́̏̾ͮ̒ ͉̬̦̹̳̜͈̋͗̀̇̍̌ ̱͕̱̤̣̟̓̽ͧ
̗̗̲ͮ͒ͧ͂̇ ̯̔͊͑͆̈Ŏ͔̝̔͌͒̓ ̞͈̩V̪͕̲̳̥̖ͩ ̙̺̲̫ͥ̔̽̏̓ͨͬȄ̹͈̦
̼͓̻͉̫̖́̄̑͌ͣͤ̄N̜̝̖̠̬ͨͮ̾
What theee fuck
who the fuck is out there seeing a ball of vibrating bees and decides to check their temperature
of Agriculture honeybee health survey released a report (August 2nd 2017) that proves honeybee colonies rose 3% compared to last year. Also the amount of bees that disappeared or died has gone down 27%. Bees, you’re doing amazing sweetie
Hi there. Could you specify on what extactly you’d like explained about bees + honey?
Long story short, bees in good conditions will make honey until their hive is so full of it they have no place to lay eggs. Beekeepers always leave the bees with enough honey to more than survive, and, if something happens to a hive, will give the bees plenty of easy food to be sure they don’t go hungry.
Removing the frames to get the honey out does inadvertently squish some of the bees, but removing the frames regularly is necessary anyway to check for disease that could wipe out the colony.
Bees at honey farms have perfectly designed hives, are provided with access to unlimited food, are almost 100% guaranteed to be safe from predators, and will be treated if the colony gets sick. All the keepers take in return is some of the food that the bees would otherwise crowd themselves out with. Being kept for honey is good for bees, assuming it’s a responsible keeper.
Please support your local beekeepers. Honey is good for you, and local honey is just about guaranteed to come from a humane source, unlike sugarcane and agave. Plus, honey can teach your immune system to not be allergic to the flowers that it was made from!
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