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 theirTHE SECRETS OF BEES 75