Honeybees have come up with an effective weapon to ward off deadly murder hornets: poop.
That’s according to a team of Vietnamese researchers, who observed honeybees gathering faces from various animals and placing it around the entrances to their nests. “Workers collected feces at our dung piles throughout the study,” researchers wrote in a report. “We also observed them foraging for feces in a nearby chicken coop.” In one instance, researchers say, honeybees were observed using human urine to line the entrance to their nest.
Honeybees in Vietnam collect animal poop and put it around the entrances of their nests in an effort to protect them from fatal murder hornet raids, researchers have found https://t.co/rhCTLRQGmq
— CNN (@CNN) December 10, 2020
However, not all honeybees are created equal, apparently. Entomologists with the Washington State Department of Agriculture say the honeybees’ North American counterparts aren’t quite so clever; they’ve never been observed setting up any kind of defense against murder hornets.
How could a honeybee know to do this?
