• DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0242668
Corpus ID: 228087051

Honey bees (Apis cerana) use animal feces as a tool to defend colonies against group attack by giant hornets (Vespa soror)

@article{Mattila2020HoneyB,
  title={Honey bees (Apis cerana) use animal feces as a tool to defend colonies against group attack by giant hornets (Vespa soror)},
  author={H. Mattila and G. Otis and L. Nguyen and H. Pham and Olivia M Knight and Ngoc T Phan},
  journal={PLoS ONE},
  year={2020},
  volume={15}
}

• H. Mattila, G. Otis, +3 authors Ngoc T Phan
• Published 2020
• Biology, Medicine
• PLoS ONE

Honey bees (genus Apis) are well known for the impressive suite of nest defenses they have evolved to protect their abundant stockpiles of food and the large colonies they sustain. In Asia, honey bees have evolved under tremendous predatory pressure from social wasps in the genus Vespa, the most formidable of which are the giant hornets that attack colonies in groups, kill adult defenders, and prey on brood. We document for the first time an extraordinary collective defense used by Apis cerana… Expand

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