Honeybee mobs smother big hornets

Honeybees of the Cyprian strain can kill an attacking hornet by ganging up and smothering it.

That tactic is new to scientists, says Alexandros Papachristoforou of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece, although it resembles an Asian honeybee species’ so-called heat-balling defense. When using that maneuver, the Asian bees cluster around a marauding hornet of another species and cook it to death with their body heat.