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Bumblebee queens breathe underwater to survive drowning
- xattt 7mo agoSource paper: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article/293/2066/20253141/480715/Diapausing-bumble-bee-queens-avoid-drowning-by https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article/293/2066/202...
- PlunderBunny 7mo agoEdit: I’m wrong - ignore this please. Bumblebees don’t sting, but they can bite, as I discovered after many years of picking them up when I saw them on the ground in a vulnerable spot.
- gnabgib 7mo agoThey certainly do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee_sting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee_sting > A bee sting is the wound and pain caused by the stinger of a female bee puncturing skin. Bee stings differ from insect bites, with the venom of stinging insects having considerable chemical variation. (..) Bumblebee venom appears to be chemically and antigenically related to honeybee venom. Wasps both sting and bite (welt size is a good indicator)
- taneq 7mo agoHuh. I also have grown up thinking bumblebees don’t sting, but: > Female bumblebees can sting repeatedly, but generally ignore humans and other animals. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumblebee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumblebee So they can sting, they just don’t want to. Further proof, if any were needed, that bumblebees are Best Bees. :)
- lll-o-lll 7mo agoTIL that bumblebees actually can sting. Not only can they sting, they can sting repeatedly (unlike the honey bee). They just choose not to. Genteel bees.
- layla5alive 7mo agoThey are pretty docile so won't be as aggressive towards stinging, but certainly can sting. You might be thinking of honey bees - which also can and do sting, but which die if they sting, so they're heavily disincentivized to sting.
- sethammons 7mo agoThe addition of a single word makes your statement true: male. Males can't, females can. https://web.archive.org/web/20071230082748/http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mbeesting.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20071230082748/http://www.straig...
- cubefox 7mo ago(I keep noticing this, more and more websites are including unnecessarily huge images on top. This one has a 24 MP (6000×4000) header. At least it's a JPEG with "just" 5.83 MB, not a PNG.)
- airstrike 7mo agoidk a nice high quality image of a Bumblebee queen seems suitable here
- serf 7mo agothe holy patron saints of the internet gave us javascript and hyperlinks so that we could have both a gargantuan picture of a bee and a fast, responsive, small web transfer for discovering that gargantuan pictures' availability. people forget these blessings, and we are now forced to eat 6MB of bee. praise be the conscientious and adaptive-delivery-aware web engineer, amen.
- airstrike 7mo agoamen
- prmoustache 7mo agoYou can totally serve a superlight image by default which embed an hyperlink that point to the higher resolution image for those wishing to see it.
- NAR8789 7mo ago> Published in Proceedings of the Royal Society Bee
- LlamaTrauma 7mo agoI'm uncomfortable with the methods used in this experiment. We don't even have a consensus on if or how insects feel pain, but we're raising them in labs for the purpose of drowning them. As far as I know freezing or crushing insects is a humane way for them to go, and I'm sure this research will be beneficial for insect conservation, but ultimately it's all in the interest of maintaining an ecosystem that humans rely on with little concern for the insects' well-being.
- timschmidt 7mo agoFriend, much of Science involves mass murder of complex life including mammals, for the express purpose of teasing apart how their individual bits work. If you live near an R1 university, there's very likely a facility nearby dedicated to the raising of lab animals. An ex worked at one that raised rodents and chickens for Michigan State University. A scientist once confided in me that he became a scientist because as a child he really liked lizards, but as a scientist, he spends much of his time murdering lizards. :-/ Everyone involved has to confront this reality on their own, come to terms with it, and figure out the line where they're willing to meet it. All the researchers I've known have cared deeply about the welfare of the animals, despite sometimes doing terrible things to them for science. They worked to limit their suffering and dispatch them as humanely as possible. Many rationalize it by comparing to the food system, which raises and slaughters orders of magnitude more souls, and keeps people living, but does not discover or record as much new knowledge as science.
- throwup238 7mo ago> All the researchers I've known have cared deeply about the welfare of the animals, despite sometimes doing terrible things to them for science. As far as I know it’s one of the few fields with authorities that can block animal cruelty on ethical grounds through ethical review boards (mandatory Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees in the case of federally funded research). Researchers must submit detailed protocols describing exactly what they plan to do, how many animals they’ll use, what procedures will be performed, how pain and distress will be managed, and why alternatives like cell cultures won’t work. There’s a whole framework called the 3Rs: replace animals where possible, reduce the number used, and refine procedures to minimize suffering. Science is the wrong tree to go barking up, especially given the impact of the research overall, compared to clothing or food or other animals products.
- jmount 7mo agoIt is "to survive floods" not to "survive drowning."
- steve_adams_86 7mo agoOne time I stored a bag of maple leaves in a garbage bag which I used for feeding my compost. I didn't need it much over winter, and in spring when I went to use it, dozens of bumblebees came out. They'd hibernated in a bag of leaves. It was such a cold winter for our climate (it hit -15°C one night!) and somehow they were just fine. When I was a kid I didn't think much about where they hibernate, how, or why. But they're definitely a species that continually yields fascinating revelations. Apart from their ability to sleep in leaves for 6 months or so, they're also able to learn to use door flaps and, apparently, survive flooding. They're resilient little creatures. Every animal seems to have surprising abilities and behaviours if you're just lucky enough to see it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J9Cr_M5osI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J9Cr_M5osI
- scheme271 7mo agoDecomposing and decaying organic material often generates heat (compost piles sometimes spontaneously catch on fire due to this). The bees may have survived due to that or maybe they were attracted to that in the first place.
- sidpatil 7mo agoOnly if it's decomposing aerobically. Anaerobic decomposition, like what you find in a septic tank, doesn't produce any heat.
- b112 7mo agoThat's how endless insects, ones genetically design to survive our winters, do so. They crawl under leaves and dying grass, which insulates them from the cold a bit. Their bodies can freeze and thaw, and they'll be fine. If you watch robins in the spring, after the snow melts but before the ground thaws, you'll see them turning over leaves to find and eat the insects. I see a lot of this, because I have a lot of trees (rural property, with forest around me). Often there are robins migrating, who stop and fill up thanks to my lawn and its plentiful ground leaf cover. As a child, I was taught that robins "eat worms". Well, they surely do. But I see them eating anything and everything which moves. They're a lot like chickens, I guess. At dusk, I often see them standing around and catching moths and things which take flight. Leaping into the air and snapping them up. Fun to watch.
- cush 7mo agoIt’s so interesting that we’re only now finding this out
- sheepscreek 7mo agoCool findings. However, considering the endangered nature of bumblebees in North America, it is sad and frustrating to see the number of Queens sacrificed in the name of research. Hundreds if not more. This was the most grotesque part of the research, that sacrificed 20 bees right here: > They froze five bees at each stage of the experimental process: before submersion, after four days underwater, after eight days underwater and after one week of post-submersion recovery. The researchers then ground up the frozen queens and measured the concentration of lactate in the resulting mush. This could have been done without needing to kill the Queen bees. One such method has been known since 2017, that draws their blood through their antennae: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5268409/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5268409/
- compsciphd 7mo ago1) there are millions of honeybee hives in north america. Therefore thare a millions of queens associated with those hives 2) its very easy/straightforward to take a honeybee larve and raise it to be a queen (i.e. let it feed on royal jelly). If you find animal research to be problematic, none of this changes anything. However, this did nothing to hurt honeybee colonies in north america.
- mc32 7mo agoTi me it seems that the opinion is the result of anthropomorphizing bees. They exist in a different social order. Their survival depends on things that, if people were organized in such way, it would seem very wrong to people. Their survival depends on numbers much more than human survival. They’re just not equivalent.
- sheepscreek 7mo agoI don’t think it’s the case if we’re referring to my personal opinion. But to be certain, I will dwell on it a bit longer.
- clort 7mo agoNot to take from the thrust your comment but just so you know, bumblebees and honeybees are not the same species.. Bumblebee nests are somewhat different than hives, and the way in which they develop is different also.
- dgan 7mo agoIs there any way to attract bumblbees in one's landplot?
- qup 7mo agoThey're after low-lying flowering plants, on my property. Basically weeds in the grass.
- 1659447091 7mo agoMy grandfather had these hedge like bushes with giant red flowers lining the front windows that always had bumblebees. Im not great with identifying flowers; looked like Hibiscus maybe, but in a somewhat dense bush or hedge structure. Anyway, the bumblebees loved that. Didn't notice them anywhere else on the property, and the first time I saw them (4-5yo) I was quite terrified and would have remembered. They were huge and fury with bold colors and not afraid me, but not so scary after I learned about paper wasp from playing around in the wood-shed.
- miriam_catira 7mo agoIt really depends on where you live. I've found this site useful: https://xerces.org/pollinator-conservation/pollinator-friendly-plant-lists https://xerces.org/pollinator-conservation/pollinator-friend... Make a few beds and allow them to be "wild" based on your region. All sorts of pollenating insects will show up, eventually.
- amelius 7mo agoI suppose because of surface tension, at insect scales it is very easy for an insect to take a bubble of air underwater that is big enough for days of breathing.