The Asian honeybee (Apis cerana) isn’t just on the look-out for flowers. In some areas, it’s also on the prowl for poo.
When threatened by a species of giant hornet (Vespa soror) — closely related to the murder hornet — workers will fly off to collect fresh animal faeces to smear carefully around the entrance of their nest, according to a study on bee hives in Vietnam.
It’s still not clear how this dung actually protects the colony, but in the field, it appears to stop scouting hornets from chewing through the nest and causing mass slaughter.
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