Wing-slapping: A defensive behavior in which honey bees flick away ant intruders

by National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan
July 09, 2024

Japanese honey bees are known to use their wings to protect their hives from intruding ants, but detailed observations of this behavior and its ecological significance have not been previously reported. Yugo Seko, Kiyohito Morii, and Yoshiko Sakamoto of the National Institute for Environmental Studies, Biodiversity Division photographed this behavior with a high-speed camera and obtained detailed recordings of Japanese honey bees rotating their bodies and flicking ants away with their wings (“wing-slapping;” Figure 1; https://youtu.be/8N2IURbwzJA). This behavior is very different from the defensive behavior previously observed among honey bees in other parts of the world, in which the bees use wind pressure from their flapping wings to force ants away. Importantly, the wing-slapping behavior observed in this study involves direct contact between honey bees and intruding ants. This new wing-slapping behavior was found to be the main method used by Japanese honey bees to defend against intruding ants. The results of this study provide important insights into the evolution of bee defensive behaviors in various regions around the world.

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Read the Ecology paper: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecy.4372