Watch bees defend their nest by slapping ants with their wings

With a flick of the wing, Japanese honeybees slap away ants that try to infiltrate their hive.

Ants often invade honeybee nests, seeking to steal honey, prey on eggs or kill worker bees. In defence, bees have been known to fan their wings to blow ants away. Now, researchers have documented making contact with their wings and physically batting ants out of the hive, a behaviour that hasn’t been studied before.

Footage from a high-speed camera shows that guard bees, positioned near a nest’s entrance, tilt their bodies towards approaching ants and flutter their wings while pivoting away. A successful hit sends the ant flying.

Many beekeepers seem unaware of this strategy, says Yoshiko Sakamoto. “I myself did not notice this behavior during my approximately 10 years of beekeeping experience,” she says.

Sakamoto, Yugo Seko and Kiyohito Morii, all at the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Tsukuba, Japan, introduced three local species of ants to the entrance of two Japanese honeybee (Apis cerana japonica) colonies and filmed hundreds of showdowns between the insects.