Float like a butterfly, bite like a bee. Strange though it may sound, a team of biologists has discovered that the humble honeybee has an additional weapon to the sting in its tail: for those targets that are too small to be stung, the honeybee can deliver a paralysing bite. All the more intriguing, the 2-heptanone (2-H) the honeybee emits when it employs its mandibles could be used as a local anaesthetic in human and veterinary medicine.
Biologists have mused over the bite of the honeybee before, suggesting that it might use 2-H as an alarm pheromone, calling on soldier and guard bees to attack any intruders, or as a way of chemically tagging areas for foraging bees to revisit. The study, conducted by a team of biologists from Greek and French universities, discovered that 2-H actually acts as an anaesthetic in small arthropods, such as wax moth larva and varroa mites, which can infiltrate beehives and eat wax and pollen. As the invaders are too small to sting, the honeybee delivers a bite that can paralyse them for up to nine minutes, allowing them to be ejected from the hive.
By: David Cornish, Edited by: Olivia Solon
Continue reading...
via Wired.co.uk
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-10/17/bite-of-a-honeybee
No comments:
Post a Comment