Honeybees warn their keepers of the presence of killer wasps. For the first time, a loud, fast-paced signal, similar to the alarms and panic cries of aphids and birds, has been documented.
Heather Matilla, a researcher at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, and colleagues recorded the sizzling and murmuring of Indian bees (Apis cerana) with a microphone in nests attacked by horse wasps.
In Vietnam, 1,300 minutes of buzz were recorded by local beekeepers and then 30,000 signals were isolated. The results of their analyzes are reported in the Royal Society Open Science.
According to them, bees constantly communicate with each other. In the absence of the enemy attacker, the background noise was quiet. However, when a giant Asian hornet (Vespa mandarinia) appeared at the entrance to the nest, dissonant sounds appeared: the animals made frequent hissing sounds at high and high speeds, stop signs, and especially a newly documented sound that researchers called the anti-predator whistle.
When the workers made these sounds, fellow runners began to gather to set up a protection against the intruder.
Their conservation kit includes lubricating the nest entrance with compost heap excrement. Other times, the enemy is completely trapped until they are destroyed by the heat or suffocated in the middle of the bee mound. (MTI)
