[蜜蜂的嗡嗡聲]
「所有嘗試抵抗的工蜂都會被碾碎或者斬首。」
如果你是一隻蜜蜂，那麼大黃蜂的攻擊可能會是你這輩子最後的蜂生體驗了。這一過程血腥而暴力，蜜蜂們必須採取對抗措施生存下去。
你或許聽過最近出現在北美的「殺人蜂」，但我們今天討論不是它們，而是它們的東方表親。
美國韋爾斯利學院（Wellesley College）的生物學家希瑟·馬蒂拉（Heather Mattila）曾前去越南，了解當地的亞洲蜜蜂是如何抵抗大黃蜂的。
「在越南，當地的大黃蜂主要是黃紋大胡蜂（Vespa soror）。」
通常情況下，當大黃蜂入侵亞洲蜜蜂的蜂巢時，數百隻蜜蜂會將入侵者包圍起來形成一個「熱球」，在大黃蜂所處的中心位置，溫度會不斷上升而氧氣含量則不斷下降，大黃蜂最後會被烤熟或憋死。但黃紋大胡蜂找到了能夠對付這一陷阱的方法。
「大黃蜂通常選擇單打獨鬥，一隻一隻地捕捉蜜蜂。但如果它們轉為群起而攻之，對蜜蜂而言就很致命了。這種情況下它們會把蜂群裡的所有成年防衛蜂都殺掉，讓蜂群喪失防守。」
面對大黃蜂的致命轟炸，亞洲蜜蜂想出了用糞便回擊的辦法……[查看全文]
[CLIP: Honeybee sounds]
"They'll basically crush or pop the head off of any worker who tries to attack them."
If you're a honey bee, a hornet attack could be the last thing you ever experience. It's a gory, violent process. And honeybees have had to adapt to stay alive.
You've probably heard of the "murder hornets" that recently turned up in North America. This is not a story about those. This research takes us east to meet their cousins.
Wellesley College biologist Heather Mattila went to Vietnam to understand how Asian honeybees defend themselves from the hornets there.
"And in Vietnam, that's the giant hornet Vespa soror."
Typically, when a hornet invades an Asian honeybee hive, hundreds of bees surround the intruder and create what's called a heat ball. With the hornet caught in the center, the heat goes up, and the oxygen goes down. The bees literally cook and choke the hornet to death.
But Vespa soror has figured out a way to avoid this trap.
"Giant hornets will hunt honeybees on their own and grab them one by one. But what is really lethal to honeybees is when they flip into a multiple hornet attack strategy. And when they do this, they essentially want to kill all the adult defenders so that the colony is no longer protected."
But in the face of this deadly bum-rush, Asian honeybees have resorted to the scatological...[full transcript]
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