#A DRONE BEE FULL#
#A DRONE BEE SERIES#

‘Drones have the advantage that they are very sensitive and easy to see. ‘Giving them syrup nearby should let them do the same thing, and the sugar in it motivates them to take it down faster.’įollowing her research, McAfee now believes drones may be one of the most effective indicators of climate change. ‘Bees will naturally go find water to bring back to the hive and fan it with their wings to cool down, which achieves evaporative cooling much like we do when we sweat,’ Huxter said.

#A DRONE BEE FULL#

Meanwhile, another method devised by fellow beekeeper Emily Huxter involved providing each colony with a feeder full of sugar syrup to act as a bee cooling station. Some of these methods included coating beehives in a protective polystyrene cover, which helps cool the hive by up to 3.5☌.

#A DRONE BEE SERIES#

That’s a temperature they shouldn’t normally experience, but we were seeing drones getting stressed to the point of death.’Īfter the first ‘drone apocalypse’, Dr McAfee and her team conducted a series of experiments to test hive insulation materials, in order to prevent another wave of mass-deaths during future heatwaves. ‘The more sensitive ones start to perish at two, or three hours. ‘We know that after six hours at 42☌, half of drones will die of heat stress,’ Dr McAfee said.

McAfee says she was first alerted to the phenomenon after noticing a high level of bee deaths following a heat wave in British Columbia during 2021.īeehives typically maintain a temperature of around 35☌, and although the Columbian bees should have been able to cope with the temperature, the excess heat ended up killing many of them off. Male bees can ‘ejaculate themselves to death’ in extreme temperatures (Picture: UBC) They have this elaborate endophallus that comes out and is about the size of their own abdomen. With immense heatwaves rocking Europe, scientists are looking at developing new ways to cool them down and prevent deaths from heat exhaustion.ĭr Alison McAffee, a postdoctoral fellow at UBC’s Michael Smith Laboratories focusing on bee health, said: ‘When drones die from shock, they spontaneously ejaculate. To a casual onlooker it may look like the bee spontaneously exploded, but new research has shown there to be a bizarre sexual component to this final act.īees try to maintain a body temperature of 35☌, and if things get as hot as 42☌ then half of drones will die within six hours. When male worker bees are subjected to very high temperatures their bodies begin to convulse, which forces them to ejaculate their abdomen-sized penis-equivalent out of their body and die from the shock. Research reveals they can literally ejaculate themselves to death in extreme heat. One more thing to worry about in the heatwave we’re facing is the gruesome death of honey bees, who have been found to suffer a difficult fate when it gets too hot. A dead drone honeybee which suffered a sad fate (Picture: UBC Beekeeping / Emily Huxter)

A drone bee