Why Do People Kill Queen Bees?

in 2018 aggressive bees started to take over the texas city of el paso the swarm of millions of bees threatened the animals and locals but when people tried to get rid of the bees they paid dearly for it yes on that day we lost the battle but not the war because we have allies who know something even queen bees are afraid of [Music] many people are scared of bees everyone has their reasons some got stung and it was too painful some heard other people's stories and some just needed to read about the killer bees whatever the case the reaction is always pretty much the same though they say that people are often afraid of what they don't understand bees are easy to defeat if you know where to hit them meet the beekeepers really cool guys by the way depictions of humans collecting honey from wild bees date to 10 000 years ago so mankind managed to figure out what's what over such a long time how bee colonies work who's responsible for what and of course who's in charge if you ask the bees the most important figure in the hive is of course the queen bee she's much larger and heavier than any other bee and her only function is to produce offspring of course there can only be one queen in the hive or chaos will erupt but the queens don't live forever if a new queen is about to appear the old one takes some of the workers and moves to another place to establish a new colony there if you see a swarm of bees chances are it's just moving day they won't bother anyone unless they're threatened imagine you're moving from one apartment to another do you feel like stopping somewhere in the middle of the street carrying a sofa just to fight someone however moving can affect honey production and so beekeepers can kill the new queen but only if the old queen is still fulfilling her royal duties when she begins to produce sick offspring or doesn't lay eggs at all the rest of the bees become lethargic which means they aren't eager to work bees plus laziness equals no honey so the beekeepers have to eliminate the old queen sometimes you can divide a hive this way and get two of them which means twice as much honey nothing personal just business but don't think you need to give bees hence when something goes wrong in their hive these are really smart insects that notice if the queen is failing and can quietly replace it the old queen remains in the hive and continues to work until the bees raise a new one and she starts working after that the old queen is either banished from the hive or the bee's destroyer well as i say they are independent creatures so it's not easy to get them to accept a new queen if a human is trying to introduce her into the hive beekeepers have a bunch of tricks and even special cages where queens are placed so that the rest of the swarm get used to them but sometimes it doesn't work worker bees tend to reject stranger queens especially if they're not genetically related in these cases the workers recognize the queen as the invader and try to defend the hive they do this by forming a ball around the queen and biting her to destroy knowing all these details helps beekeepers get rid of hives located in places they aren't supposed to be when bees really threaten people you have to give up moving the hive and the only way is to eliminate the queen bee while it lays 2000 eggs a day there's no hope the bees will disappear well to get to the queen you first have to get rid of most of the worker bees with the help of poison and then pour it right into the hive and then seal it for a couple of days experienced beekeepers say this is the only guaranteed way who are we not to trust them watch his movement there's a dark side to control the animals they won't tell you about this in school because people prefer to keep silent about such facts but i found the truth it's hidden in this you're ruined such a great moment so it's hidden in this book sapiens a brief history of humankind by professor yuval noah harari according to him humans begin to exert control over animals already at the hunting stage nomads who hunted wild rams targeted only adult males or old sick females why so that animals could keep on procreating then when it came to domestication the ancient humans began to remove aggressive males that resisted control then they got rid of overly curious females and so on things got even harsher when it came to pigs to prevent them from escaping people removed their snouts simple and cruel logic if you take away the ability to sniff from an animal it'll depend on you completely in short in terms of evolution we've certainly succeeded as a species but at what caused could manipulating bees with the help of their queens also be considered a way of controlling animals perhaps but the death of the queen bee doesn't always mean the end of the entire colony yes when the queen dies the entire colony often numbering up to a hundred thousand bees is in temporary disarray the queen bee releases chemical signals that prevent worker bees from laying eggs but soon after her death these chemical signals wear off and worker bees can do it again in short they can start to multiply at a terrible rate which means the entire system breaks down if you don't fix it in time the swarm will die usually worker bees house the eggs or larva less than three days old in special cells for future queens the bees feed the larvae with royal jelly until they turn into young queen bees take nuptial flights mate in the air and try to kill each other the last queen bee standing gets the crown what about other animals someone larger and less ambiguous let's take wolves could the death of one wolf cause the rest of the pack to fall apart research shows this is possible but a lot depends on the size of the pack the season and of course the status of the wolf each wolf plays an important role in the survival of the pack but the death of an alpha female alpha male or both of them can be a disaster a small pact that lost its leaders especially during the breeding season or just before it will dissolve with a 77 chance by the way if leaders die of natural causes it's less likely to result in the pack dissolving than when the death of the leader was caused by humans i honestly don't know how it works maybe the involvement of humans somehow undermines the wolf's authority the dead alphas are no longer considered cool which means there's no point in sticking together actually different animals choose their leaders based on different criteria most people think the strongest or most aggressive individual should be in charge but in real life everything is way more interesting african elephants and killer whales choose the oldest female as their leader spotted hyenas inherit their title to become an alpha female your mother has to be an alpha female the three spine sticklebacks generally choose their leader based on physical appeal even in chimp troops when male aggression really plays a decisive role we can sometimes witness insane things happening chimps do politics small and peaceful males may well be at the head of a troop if they build coalitions with fellow chimps grooming sharing the fruit tickling the infant i'm serious you know how some politicians like to use kids photos in their election campaigns chimps do the same still not impressed ha bees have elections instead of arguments their debates are based on dancing despite having a queen bees act democratically when they decide where to move an endangered hive the scouts first look for suitable nest sites then return to dance to describe how cool their newfound site is the area most of the scouts agreed to investigate wins this means the whole swarm will move there you get it right we're talking about elections among insects i wouldn't be surprised if it turns out they removed the queen only after they reached a consensus your time is over vote we must vote damn i totally forgot we have a democratic hive to be honest after this i thought the bees could no longer surprise me well really what could be cooler than that but they did they learn to clone themselves south african cape honeybees can make perfect copies of themselves they sneak into the hives of other bee species and lay clone eggs there 200 000 units are ready with a million more well on the way but the clones are not going to work they only demand food and this gradually leads to the collapse of the hive yes they're harmless alone but what if there are hundreds or even thousands of such bees in the colony it just won't sustain itself but the most surprising thing is not even the cloning itself scientists found out that the bees with this parasitic behavior are genetically identical descendants of a single working bee that lived in 1990 that is 30 years ago some bee decided to clone itself and the process is still going on this lineage of clones is responsible for the collapse of 10 percent of honeybee colonies every year by the way if cloned bees don't capture stranger hives they completely destroy their own because well no one wants to work together for a common cause they don't actually want to work at all i'm so sick of it no one wants to work there are only freeloaders around so you'll do the dishes you'll do the cleaning and you'll get nectar i'm so sick of it no one wants to work there are only three loaders around cloning doesn't seem to be beneficial to the bee population meanwhile some ambistoma salamanders in north america have adapted so much to this way of breeding they even abandoned males yes females simply clone themselves generation after generation many scientists believe this is a dead end as the lack of fresh genes could make females weaker but hey salamanders have been doing this for 6 million years if cloning had downsides they would have gone extinct long ago instead clones regenerate one and a half times faster than species that reproduce in a traditional way how's this even possible seems like the salamanders have found a way to diversify their genome they simply steal someone else's dna but they don't use it for fertilizing eggs as one might think but add it to their own genome and then clone themselves in one article i found a terrific name for this reproduction process kleptogenesis it sounds absurd but it really works if all cloning worked like that we'd hit the jackpot imagine you're a farmer and of course you take care of your farm but there's always a risk that you can get sick calves with slim chances of survival cloning can fix that you can endlessly create copies of the best animals wait you bred a pig sure did most genetically perfect one in the contest oink perhaps as a result we could accidentally breed super cows that would eventually take over the planet but that's a story for another time see you later

Channel: WATOP

Views: 1,347,660

Keywords: WATOP, Wa Top

Id: _Dw7ggqtV-g

Length: 10min 43sec (643 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 04 2021