{"id":244879,"date":"2024-07-18T10:33:51","date_gmt":"2024-07-18T10:33:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/18\/watch-bees-defend-their-nest-by-slapping-ants-with-their-wings\/"},"modified":"2025-06-25T17:14:29","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T17:14:29","slug":"watch-bees-defend-their-nest-by-slapping-ants-with-their-wings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/18\/watch-bees-defend-their-nest-by-slapping-ants-with-their-wings\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch bees defend their nest by slapping ants with their wings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> [ad_1]<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n<p>\n    <iframe title=\"Japanese honeybees slap ants to defend their hive\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/EjCAfzQVj0Y?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\n    <\/iframe>\n<\/p>\n<p>With a flick of the wing, Japanese honeybees slap away ants that try to infiltrate their hive.<\/p>\n<p>Ants often invade honeybee nests, seeking to steal honey, prey on eggs or kill worker bees. In defence, bees have been known to fan their wings to blow ants away. Now, researchers have documented making contact with their wings and physically batting ants out of the hive, a behaviour that hasn\u2019t been studied before.<\/p>\n<p>Footage from a high-speed camera shows that guard bees, positioned near a nest\u2019s entrance, tilt their bodies towards approaching ants and flutter their wings while pivoting away. A successful hit sends the ant flying.<\/p>\n<p>Many beekeepers seem unaware of this strategy, says <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nies.go.jp\/researchers-e\/300372.html\">Yoshiko Sakamoto.<\/a> \u201cI myself did not notice this behavior during my approximately 10 years of beekeeping experience,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<p>Sakamoto, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nies.go.jp\/researchers-e\/301926.html\">Yugo Seko<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nies.go.jp\/researchers-e\/301925.html\">Kiyohito Morii,<\/a> all at the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Tsukuba, Japan, introduced three local species of ants to the entrance of two Japanese honeybee (<em>Apis cerana japonica<\/em>) colonies and filmed hundreds of showdowns between the insects.<\/p>\n<p>In most of these interactions, the bees smacked at ants with their wings. But the defence didn\u2019t always work. For Japanese queenless ants (<em>Pristomyrmex punctatus<\/em>) and Japanese pavement ants (<em>Tetramorium tsushimae<\/em>), about half to one-third of attempts flung ants away. Wing-slapping was far less successful against Japanese wood ants (<em>Formica japonica<\/em>), a larger and faster species.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"js-content-prompt-opportunity\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Ants vary in their level of menace to bees: some species bite or kill workers, while others are less of a threat. Bees may have evolved to favour the fanning defence to avoid making contact with the more dangerous ants, but wing-slapping may be a more efficient option against other species, the researchers suggest.<\/p>\n<p>They hope to investigate this idea by mapping bee responses against ant aggression. The team also plans to study how bees\u2019 interactions with ants change over time and whether they improve at wing-slapping with more experience. \u201cThese defensive behaviours still hold many mysteries,\u201d says Morii.<\/p>\n<section class=\"ArticleTopics\">\n<p class=\"ArticleTopics__Heading\">Topics:<\/p>\n<\/section><\/div>\n<p>[ad_2]<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/2439789-watch-bees-defend-their-nest-by-slapping-ants-with-their-wings\/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&#038;utm_source=NSNS&#038;utm_medium=RSS&#038;utm_content=home\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[ad_1] With a flick of the wing, Japanese honeybees slap away ants that try to infiltrate their hive. Ants often invade honeybee nests, seeking to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":244880,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244879"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}