Buzzin'

Interesting on the picture the head of the soldier is bigger while the text claims it's smaller , which is right ???

Francis Ratnieks, professor of apiculture...

What does a bloke who studies monkeys no about beees?

'Advanced insect societies' have soldiers to defend the workers and producers.

'Advanced' human societies have? ....politicians, to deceive and lie to the producers.

May I change species please?

Bit light on detail and accuracy as nonsecularist points out.

How are they physically specialised apart from bigger bodies. They are stingless, right? So what other specialisations do they have to fit them for defensive duties?

Bit of a puff piece really. Disappointing.

Interesting on the picture the head of the soldier is bigger while the text claims it's smaller , which is right ???

The proportion of the head to the bod is smaller - that is evident from the photo

How are they physically specialised apart from bigger bodies. They are stingless, right? So what other specialisations do they have to fit them for defensive duties?

They are physically bigger.

Could it not be that the appearance of the physically distinct soldier bees in a species of sting-less bee is the adaption. Without the "stinger" the bees needed to develop another defensive strategy, whereas normally any bee can act as the soldier as they have the weaponry..

Bit light on detail and accuracy as nonsecularist points out.

How are they physically specialised apart from bigger bodies. They are stingless, right? So what other specialisations do they have to fit them for defensive duties?

Bit of a puff piece really. Disappointing.

Tiny little striped bazookas. Obv.

I like bees

He might have meant wings, clearly not as long.

Jatai - Jedi?
Bees with 'force'?

Yes,they look real hummstingers.

Scientists have discovered the first known "soldier" bee. The bee, which is larger and heavier than other worker bees in its nest and defends the entrance, has been identified in colonies of a Brazilian stingless bee known as a Jatai.

Stingless bees?

What's the point of having soldiers when you're stingless? That's like having aircraft carriers with no planes.

What exactly are we supposed to discuss?

Haha - slow start to the week is it Alison?

It's interesting looking at the comments on this article. There's obviously some bewilderment as to this article and what it's about. What it shows is how disconnected we have become from what keeps us alive. Most people are more familiar with the characters in the big brother house than they are with what creates everything they have and keeps them alive.

Bees and other insects don't just pollinate flowers. All that amazing diversity of flowering plants and all that has created much of the produce we take for granted in supermarket wouldn't even exist if it were not for these insects. Flowers only evolved this incredible diversity because of these insects. This is because essentially flowers are adverts for insects. All these varieties of fruit and all the species that rely on them came about because of this insect plant relationship. It has produced some of the most amazing complex relationships in the natural world, where each species relies on each other, and they could not exist without each other.

Of course some of you are still yawning and saying what's it to do with me?

Well actually these insects had more to do with the evolution of human beings than supernatural beings created in people's minds.

At first sight this may seem a silly idea. However, it is thought that the colour vision and forward facing eyes of primates, along with their hands evolved, to exploit the fruit that flowering plants produced. As I say plants created these amazingly colourful flowers as adverts for insects. Plants can't walk around and so need an intermediary to fertilize other plants at a distance. This is the part insects play. The plants also needed a means to transport their seeds around, and preferrably when they get dropped, it helps if they are accompanied by a big dollop of manure to give them a good start in life. But plants don't want their fruit eaten until it is ripe, and the seeds fully developed and viable. So just as with the flowers they use colours to indicate the presecence of ripe fruit. This is essentially why ripe fruit will go from say, green to read. The species that eat them need to recognize these colours and to be able to pick them. It's why primates developed such good colour vision, and their hands.

That's right. The only reason you can see the colours on your computer monitor and you can type your comments on your computer with those complex hands - is essentially because of the interaction of bees an other insect pollinators and plants. Amazing isn't it. There's so much we take for granted and never stop to think about. People would struggle to type or make anything with paws or hoofs. Just imagine if your vision was monochromatic, and the world of colour was unknown to you. It would be pointless football teams having different colour shirts, because we wouldn't be able to tell them apart.

Yes it's a pity that the main paper is behind and paywall, although this is quite normal for academic papers. I do have my doubts whether it would give the extra information that some of those commenting here would like to see. Most science papers are written for other experts, so they assume a lot of prior knowledge and expertize on behalf of the reader. This often makes them unintelligle to the layperson.

There is a link to the abstract in the article which explains more. However you really need more background knowledge to really understand more. I suspect what they mean by smaller head size, is headsize relative to the body. Although I do concede that it would be better if a bit more work had been done on providing clearer explanations and photographs.

So apparently "When challenged by the obligate robber bee Lestrimelitta limao, an important natural enemy, larger workers were able to fight for longer before being defeated by the much larger robber." how much larger? Colonies of 10000, that's a lot of honey.

Oh, I forgot, why this is not an insignificant story. There are something like close to 20,000 species of bee, and this is the first time this has been noted. Being that bees and other similar insects are largely responsible for our evolution, and all the amazing diversity of flowering plants, it's not really so trivial. The overall group of insects are called Hymenopterans, or are sometimes referred to as aculeates. They are bees, wasps and ants. This is something well known with ants, but not bees.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hymenoptera
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowering_plant
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/courses/bio303/coevolution.htm

Don't mock it because you don't understand it.

Thanks Ste , erudite piece of evolutionary biology.

I also, for one, welcome our newly armed perimeter conscious honey bee overlords.

Is this a good point to mention that both Tories and Labour are pushing for the reintroduction of GMO products? Hopefully bees' evolutionary adaptability will protect them against crops laced with genetic insecticide, because it does not look as if human common sense will be much help.

Thanks for the lecture. You're such a bundle of joy.

You ask a good question but as it's addressed to someone who thinks the UK should apologize over the fate of Joan of Arc, you might not get a good answer.

Just read a German newspaper article about it. They mentioned more details.
Apparently the robber bees send out "scouts" to find nests to attack.

The scientists actually put a robber bee close to a nest to see what the soldier bees would do.
The soldier bees attack the scouts. Using their longer legs to "hug" the much larger robber bee scout and then bite at the wings not letting go. Several of them die in the fight but in this way they do have a chance to immobilize and kill the scout.
No surviving scout, no attack.