A Bee Mob Kills Giant Hornets With a Hot & Stuffy "Bee Ball"

Japanese giant hornets can wreak havoc on a hive of Japanese honeybees, slicing off the heads of worker bees, feeding on the hive's honey, and carrying back the larvae to feed to their own young. But the native bees do have one effective defense against the giant marauders, and it's a battle plan that uses the bees' one clear advantage: numbers. When a hornet scout appears, hundreds of bees instantly swarm around the invader in what's known as a "bee ball." In a new experiment, researchers say they've determined exactly how the bee ball kills. Previously, scientists thought that the heat generated by the mass of vibrating bees killed the hornet. But in the study, published in the journal Naturwissenschaften, researchers found that temperature alone can't do the trick. The hornets