National Geographic UK - 03.2020

Not from varroa mites, pesticides, colony

collapse disorder, or any of the many other

perils now facing honeybee populations across

the world, but from hornets—each one a

red-eyed giant next to the hairy little bees.

Each strike took just an instant, the predators

snatching bees out of the air and then flying

away with their victims, which would be

carved up later and fed to the hornets’ own

ravenous larvae.

One-on-one, a western honeybee is no match

for a European hornet. Up to an inch and a half

long, the hornet is equipped with powerful

mandibles capable of shearing smaller insects

to pieces.

For those first few days of the siege, the

honeybees appeared helpless in the face of the

hornet onslaught.

“I thought, Oh God, if this keeps happening,

they will kill my whole colony,” says photogra-

pher Ingo Arndt, whose yard in Langen, Ger-

many, hosts the honeybees.

But as the week wore on, the bees began gain-

ing ground. They started to swarm near the

entrance of the nest, creating a living carpet of

guards. Each time a hornet flew too close, some

of the defenders would leap onto the invader and

tackle it. In an instant, more honeybees would

pile on and pin the hornet down.

Inside this bee ball, something even more

bizarre was taking place. Western honeybees

have a trick in which they can activate their

THE SECRETS OF BEES 75