Honeybees Mesmerizing Defensive Wave

A shimmering beehive repels intruders, mesmerizes humans. You’d be one of the lucky few if you’ve ever seen this phenomenon before, much less have even heard about it. Bee society is well organized and full of surprises. This is very strange social behavior, but it does serve a purpose.

“The wave” as we would call it, for its strong resemblance to a similar human activity in the grandstands at sporting events, is a synchronized activity where a band of bees occupying the outer layer will momentarily thrust their abdomen 90 degrees outward. As they retract into their prone position, the band seems to move outward, so that the bees behind the wave take their turn at the right moment. It’s a chain reaction, and amazing to watch.

We can’t even guess how they know to do such a thing, and for their part, the bees aren’t talking! You might say that if a bee could talk, it would say, “I could tell you how it’s done, but then I’d have to kill you.” In the meantime, it’s a good bet that bee scientists are hard at work monitoring and measuring such unusual phenomena.

Bees collected together in uniform groups seem to resemble the pixel matrix of an LCD screen, like what you might see on the digital screens and billboards of Times Square in New York. What we are witnessing is simply an incredible performance. The effect also makes a peculiar sound. The explanation is that the behavior repels wasps by foiling their attempts at plucking individual bees for consumption, and also confuses their attempts at penetrating the hive. The confused wasp eventually gives up, and seeks food elsewhere.

This particular video is reported to have originated in Vietnam. The phenomenon was once featured in a nature series narrated by the famous David Attenborough. Bees employ multiple levels of defense. They don’t automatically resort to stinging invaders except as a last resort. Stinging, as many of you know, is fatal to honey bees. Shimmering isn’t. As far as anybody knows, bees are the only other animal, besides humans, who can perform “the wave”. Other animals do exhibit coordinated group behaviors. Chimpanzees can go to war against other tribes of their species, for instance. Killer whales can tip an ice floe in a coordinated assault, in order to dislodge an edible seal. Ants can form rafts made from themselves to survive floods.

The animal kingdom seems to never run out of surprising sights. Bees have a very close relationship with humans, and even though we have to gear up with protective clothing to steal their honey, we don’t kill them for sustenance. We want them to live. In order to do that, we can’t take all of their honey. We have to leave an amount that will feed their larvae and pupae through the coming months. In return for their honey, we ensure their survival by giving them a place to live and protecting their hive. The relationship is symbiotic. Yet, for the thousands of years we have been enjoying a mutually respectful relationship with bees, they are still wild creatures, undomesticated. They are virtually unchanged through breeding practices.