F H card letter b

Thursday, September 29, 2005

Bees heat predators to death

I sometimes think I should either find or design a t-shirt that reads,

"Haldane was more right than he could suppose."

J.B.S. Haldane was the British biologist who came up with the famous law, "Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we CAN suppose." and I suspect would have been delighted with this report from Science News.
At least two species of honeybees [in China], the native Apis cerana and the introduced European honeybee, Apis mellifera, engulf a wasp in a living ball of defenders and heat the predator to death. A new study of heat balling has described a margin of safety for the defending bees, says Tan Ken of Yunnan Agricultural University in Kunming, China.

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