Remember murder hornets? They fell into 2020 somewhere between civil unrest, a pandemic, coronavirus shutdowns, the biggest election of our lifetimes, the probable loss of your favorite restaurant and possibly your job.
Remember now? Ah, yes, the murder hornets!
There's a new twist in the murder hornet storyline, and it seems an unlikely one: They're being repelled by hard-working honeybees who developed a unique protection stratagy.
They're using feces as a weapon.
The New York Times reports that honeybees in Vietnam have started adorning the entrances to their nests with other animals’ feces "in a defensive behavior called fecal spotting." "The odious ornamentation seems to repel the wasps — or at least seriously wig them out — and offers the intriguing possibility that honeybees might use stool as a type of rudimentary tool," the Times wrote.
It's ingenious, if inodorous, because bees like other wee beasties will not go near another animal's waste.
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Researchers stumbled onto the trend when local beekeepers started noticing a malodorous gray sludge on honeycombs .... They tracked some local bees to farms where they were alighting on heaps of pig poo and chicken scat and carrying it back home.
“I remember running back to the apiary, screaming, ‘It’s true, it’s finally true!’” researcher Dr. Heather Mattila told the Times. Using a tool to protect themselves could mean bees are smarter than we knew.
One question remains, of course: Could it work for us? Before you rush to the backyard to roll around in the dog's leavings, researchers urged caution .. for numerous reasons. Beyond the obvious, there’s no guarantee that all deadly, ugly hornets are dung shy. It's also not beneficial to one's career or social life.
Dr. Rachael Bonoan, a bee biologist at Providence College recommended, “if you’re a human, don’t use poop to try and protect yourself from a murder hornet.”
But if you're a bee? It makes you a genius.