#aFactADay2023
#991: in large nests, the head bee very rarely does any foraging, so lives off trophallaxis almost exclusively. they get really aggressive, and start gnashing their mandibles and pulling the "C-pose", until they're offered food. as soon as trophallaxis is initiated, the bee calms down completely. and this slightly odd aggression precedes the vast majority of transactions, not just towards the top of the chain (altho most trophallaxis occurs upwards, especially in the most common 2- to 3-bee nests).

#aFactADay2023
#990: sometimes the older sweat bees in a nest share food back down to younger bees, to redistribute and smooth out the food throughout the nest. basically bee communism. this means that the nests can last longer in inclement rain, because it dampens out the unpredictability. (under experimental conditions, survivorship increased by 50% when a stranded nest was permitted trophallaxis.)

#aFactADay2023
#989: in New World sweat bees (called so because they're attracted to sweat), trophallaxis occurs between social groups. most nests contain 2-11 females (some remain solitary), and the oldest is the most socially important. usually, it's the younger females who do most of the foraging, so they then give their nutrients to the older bees by trophallaxis.

yo luckily posted on his meme world... and so did i!!!
i've also given my own meme forum a quick defibrillation so go and check it out

i've also updated my contact links with these so if you forget to subscribe you'll never have an excuse to miss a meme >:)

#aFactADay2023
#988: Vespula austriaca (sometimes called the cuckoo wasp (but i won't introduce it as that because there are other cuckoo wasps) because it's an obligate social parasite) lives off a colony of Vespula acadica, using physical aggression and pheromones to control the workers. they demand food from the host wasps via trophallaxis, prioritising themselves and their young over the hosts' larvae. they live off interspecies trophallaxis.

#aFactADay2023
#987: trophallaxis is also a means of identification, for distinguishing outsiders and finding (long-lost-)friends. the Cataglyphis iberica ant is polydomous, meaning a colony lives in multiple nests, and can split into subgroups and re-form. after being artificially split into subgroups, each half of a colony retains its "hydrocarbon profile" (which is essentially the smell of the vomit). this means the group can reform if need be, communicating using a trophallaxis fingerprint of sorts. it also means that satellite nests can be operated via trophallaxis to form a ""Gestalt" colony order", because of this uniquely identifying vomit smell that they retain.

#aFactADay2023
#986: trophallaxis can be a way of transferring disease immunity! in carpenter ants for example, they share antimicrobial proteins and other immune stuff between them by trophallaxis (where they regurgitate some food (in liquid form in this case) for a friend). by sharing their responses, ants can spread antibodies before even the disease spreads, allowing the colony "to thrive under high pathogenic pressures".
link: trophallaxis

#aFactADay2023
#985: other methods of murdering murder hornets include poisoning one with a bee that's been spiked with malathion (an insecticide). the idea is that the toxin then spreads between hornets by trophallaxis (where they share food by spitting it back up), but this hasn't been tested much.

#aFactADay2023
#984: in northern giant hornets' native regions (parts of Japan, China and Korea), the bees have much less of a problem. rather than just coming outside and attacking the hornet straight away, they wait for the hornet to enter the hive and then swarm it. they flap so hard around the hornet that it raises its temperature to a critical level where it dies of heat (and carbon dioxide poisoning). but the bees have to be careful to keep a balance, because their tolerance to carbon dioxide and heat is only slightly higher (like a couple of degrees).

#aFactADay2023
#983: murder hornets are huge. they're the biggest species of hornet, and there are stories of people who tried to hoover them up to capture them and they just won't fit in the nozzle. one method of stopping them getting in your hive is just to make the entrance to the hive a bit smaller. (the problem then is that they just hang around at the entrance.)

#aFactADay2023
#982: apparently the way to bait the murder hornets is with prawns. if you have a murder hornet in your house, move house put some prawns in a trap. particularly in the breeding season, perhaps because they want a bit of protein in their diet. the WSDA uses fruit juice with added alcohol... the alcohol repels bees, reducing bycatch, and intoxicates the hornets, giving them a fun night so they're easier to handle.

#aFactADay2023
#981: in case you weren't scared of these murder hornets enough already, they're capable of spraying their venom! a 77yo, who wasn't stung at all but rather sprayed from a distance, lost partial vision in one eye. the worst part was that the venom managed to penetrate into the inside of the eyeball even without being stung!

#aFactADay2023
#980: the average murder hornet colony has around 250-500 hornets. just one sting is compared to having a "hot nail driven into [your] leg" (by entomologist Masato Ono), so imagine- actually, don't imagine. 260 stings is enough to give a 70-kilo mouse an excruciating death.

#aFactADay2023
#979: murder hornet venom is a lot less potent compared to wasp venom, but it's injected in much higher quantities, and at high concentrations. the murder hornet can inject over a milligram of venom. it has an LD50 (lethal dose median - basically, the mass of venom (per body mass) required to kill on average half of mice) of 4.1mg/kg (which means one sting can kill a mouse of around 270g).

#aFactADay2023
#978: the venom in a murder hornet's stinger contains mastoparan-M, which damages tissue by stimulating phospholipase, an enzyme that breaks down fats. i'm not quite sure of the mechanisms because everything's in sciencespeak. the venom also contains a neurotoxin called mandaratoxin (possibly giving it its species name, V. mandarinia (or vice versa?)).

#aFactADay2023
#977: the WSDA has been trying for a while to, uh, enslave some Judas specimina* to hunt down the murder hornet nests, and apparently (after lots of trial and error i guess) the only thing they can use to tie the trackers to the back of the hornets is dental floss. the trackers were initially bluetooth, so the researchers would have to follow the hornet wherever it went to stay in range. they were surprised to find how fasts hornets can fly.

#aFactADay2023
#976: the stinger of a murder hornet is about 6mm - four times the length of a honeybee's. i'm starting to think they deserve their nickname.
link: bee stings

#aFactADay2023
#975: when stung by a honey bee, it will mark you with pheromones indicating you as a threat. all other nearby bees will then sacrifice their lives to sting you. obviously they don't intend you to be a threat, because, in the words of JB Priestley, they'd be "throwing [bees] away for nothing", but it's a really effective method on parasites in the hive, and definitely worth the loss of life then. the alarm pheromone in question (there are others) is released by the Koschevnikov gland, next to the sting, and contains isopentyl acetate (IPA), along with around 40 other active chemical compounds. some say that the pheromone smells like bananas.

#aFactADay2023
#974: the abdomen of a bee is split into nine segments, and the last three segments form the sting. the sting has a venom gland in it and the muscles on the gland continue pumping, even after the sting's been pulled out by the bee (the stinger has barbs on it and when the bee tries to escape, the stinger (and the digestive tract) gets pulled out).

#aFactADay2023
#973: honeybees have scales, made of wax! they have four pairs of wax glands tucked away between the segments of the abdomen from where they produce wax, which comes out as thin, clear scales. the workers then chew up this wax and mix it with saliva, and it becomes more whitish.