Smothered to death: Hornets asphyxiated by honeybees

Current Biology, Vol 17, R795-R796, 18 September 2007

Asian honeybees have been shown to kill hornets by 'thermo- balling', in which they surround a hornet to form a ball within which the temperature increases to a lethal level. We report here that Cyprian honeybees, Apis mellifera cypria, kill their major enemy, the Oriental hornet, Vespa orientalis, in a different way — by asphyxia- balling, in which the Cyprian honeybees mob the hornet and smother it to death.

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• insects

[rlpete2]

I don't believe the bees sting the hornet, nor asphycsiate it. I've read that what they do is raise its temperature to a fatal level with their body heat.

Cheers for teamwork and selfsacrifice.

[the13thzen]

Hooray for teamwork! ^_^

[Tokerific1976]

@rlpete2 Your 100% correct in this

[JoeParkerAndThePower]

@rlpete2 if you read the article you'll see that while some bees can kill some hornets by thermo-balling in this case the temperature inside the ball was a (non-lethal) 45c (this hornet can survive 50c).

On the other hand, when the authors inserted blocks in the hornets' abdomens to prevent the bees from squashing / asphixiating them, the hornets survived.

if you put the reference in the description into scholar.google.com [Current Biology, Vol 17, R795-R796], you'll get the full story.

[59Ballons]

@rlpete2 It says thet in the description...

[JamChronic]

@rlpete2 yes, the asian giant hornet can not survive the temp. that the bees produce in the ball which is cca 45 degrees celcius

[FireRed808]

Really? Wow. Thats killer all right.

[FireRed808]

Owned!

[ATY9Productions]

that hornet was piled !!!!!

[davver12]

owned

[crapatitus]

interesting, but i read that a ball of bees usually consisted of over a hundred bees...

[manhoodg2199]

The other video shows asian giant hornets of 30 killing 30,000 honey bees within a few hours.

The only attack bees have is to surround a single hornet and vibrate their muscles which someone stated earlier kills the hornet. Many bees also die in the process but it's worth it since a single Hornet can kill over 40 honey bees PER MINUTE