Giant Honeybees Dance Together; Predators Get Confused and Leave

It's a hard choice, deciding whether ants or bees are Discoblog's favorite kind of wickedly intelligent insect. But if anything could sway the proceedings one way or the other, it's this: Bees know how to do the wave. A study published today in PLoS One suggests that giant honeybees have a kind of collective intelligence that allows them to fend off attacking hornets—a valuable skill, because the bees live in open nests. A team led by Gerald Kastberger of the University of Graz in Austria watched video of 450 examples of "shimmering"—a group of bees flipping their abdomens up and down to create a dazzling visual effect, something like fans doing the wave at a stadium. The bees use this technique at other times, like when one is leaving the nest, but the researchers say they mobilize shimmering en masse when they see a hornet. Kastberger says hundreds of bees ...