Asian giant hornet is no match for Japanese honeybees
Find out how a colony of Japanese honeybees defeats an intruding Asian giant hornet, without laying a single sting.
Transcript
An Asian giant hornet discovers a Japanese honeybee colony.
Her job is to mark the spot with a telltale pheromone … so that her sisters can find it later.
But the honeybees know her game…and set a trap.
The hornet enters the hive, and her fate is sealed.
By swinging their abdomens to and fro the bees signal their strategy to one another.
They hold off until the last possible moment. And then, as if of one mind, they swarm.
The hornet is engulfed by hundreds of bees.
But they don’t sting the intruder. Instead, as revealed by thermal photography, they all begin to vibrate, gradually raising their collective temperature to 117 degrees Fahrenheit.
Japanese honeybees can tolerate a temperature of 118 degrees.
Their victim's upper limit is 115. The hornet scout is slowly roasted alive.
And the secret of the honeybees' location dies with her.
Asian giant hornet is no match for Japanese honeybees
Find out how a colony of Japanese honeybees defeats an intruding Asian giant hornet, without laying a single sting.
