Honey Bee AgressionBiology 342 Fall 2012Tess Myers |
|
How do bees defend and attack?Bees primarily respond to attack by stinging. Each female bee is equipped with a single barbed stinger loaded with a venom sac containing apitoxin, a complex mix of proteins that cause local inflammation and acts as an anticoagulant. This stinger is a weapon to be wary of, but it is also lethal to the bee. Once the stinger lodges itself in a foe, the bee must disembowel herself to separate from it. This leaves the stinger and venom sac in place, where micro contractions allow it to continue administering venom, and allows the mortally wounded bee to continue flying at the intruder, as if for a second attack.
So, is there any way to protect yourself from bees? Turns out, yes. The first step is not not disturb any hives- bees rarely attack when unprovoked. However, humans have been meddling with bees for a millenia, and have discovered that smoke makes bees slow and "sleepy". This realization made it easy for early humans to sedate a colony of bees and steal the honey. However, a scientific explanation for this phenomena has recently arisen. As we discussed in the Ontogeny section, bees use a chemical signal called iso-pentyl acetate, an "alarm pheremone", to let surrounding bees know that there is a threat. However, smoke appears to confuse this signal, preventing the cascade of alarmed bees and causing relative calm.
|