WELLESLEY, MASSACHUSETTS — Scientists have found that bees can scream in bee language when giant murder hornets attack their nests.
Here are the details: In a recent study published on the Royal Society Open Science website, researchers say they found that Asian honeybees have found a way to “scream” when giant murder hornets attack their nests.
The study found that the bees have developed a way to create intense vibro-acoustic signals, which are short pulses of vibration and sound frequencies produced by their wings and thoraxes.
When a scouting murder hornet comes close to the nest, the bees close to the nest’s entrance would suddenly increase their signalling seven-fold.
At the same time, these worker bees also begin making anti-predatory signals, which are harsher and more irregular in their frequencies.
Video recordings show the bees make this antipredatory signal by raising their abdomens, buzzing their wings and racing about frantically.
In some cases, the signals seem to cause worker bees at the hive’s entrance to go into defense mode, spreading animal dung on the hive to repel predators, or trying to form a ball of bees around the scouting hornet, which heats it to death.
The study says these sophisticated defenses require quick reactions from all the bees in the hive, and the frantic and energetic signals from the bees at the entrance seem to be the way the 'call to arms’ is transmitted quickly.