A new recently published research found that honeybees, specifically male bee workers, are suffering a horrible and rather unusual death during strong heatwaves.
As indicated in a Mail Online report, when male worker bees, also called drones, are dying from shock due to excessive heat, they tremble, which forces them to ejaculate, and an "internal penis-equivalent" about the same size of the bee's own abdomen comes out of their body.
Increasing temperatures resulting from climate change will necessitate species to adjust to survive. However, honeybees need a little help from keepers to endure heat shock.
According to Dr. Alison McAfee, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia, when male worker bees die from shock, they spontaneously "ejaculate."
She elaborated on how the drones have this intricate endophallus the size of their own abdomen that comes out when they ejaculate to death.
"It's pretty extreme," she said.
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Honey bee owners along with scientists continue to try to figure out what is causing bees to succumb to the colony collapse disorder which has devastated apiaries around the country.
Mass Die-Off
Dr. McAffee is in contact with a network of beekeepers and honey producers throughout British Columbia, including beekeeper Emily Huxter from the city of Armstrong. In the middle of the 2021 summer heatwave in British Columbia, Huxter noticed dozens of dead drones on the ground.
She took images and emailed them to Dr. McAfee, who then contacted other beekeepers in the province who witnessed a similar mass die-off. Typically, the inside of a honeybee colony is a stable environment that retains a temperature of roughly 95 degrees Fahrenheit.
Dr. Alison McAfee (@ali_mcafee), a biochemist at @ubcmsl, discusses why male bees explosively ejaculate to death during heatwaves. 🐝 🔥 💀 via @MailOnline https://t.co/hYXPBqC5to
— UBC Media Relations (@UBCNews) February 24, 2022
'Drone Apocalypse'
The bees of Huxter should have been able to cope with warm weather, although the heatwave pushed them to the brink, resulting in a "drone apocalypse.
Dr. McAfee explained they know that six hours after at 107 degrees Fahrenheit, half of the drones die of heat stress. The more sensitive ones begin to expire at two or three hours. That, she continued, is a temperature they should not normally encounter. However, they saw drones "getting stressed to the point of death."
Following the first severe heatwave, Dr. McAfee and Huxter created experiments to test hive insulation materials, trying to shield the hives and drones from a predicted, second, smaller heatwave.
Describing the experiments, Dr. McAfee explained, the other major problem that some beekeepers observed was that half their so-called "nucs," small starter colonies, died off during the first heatwave. That is a massive die-off, and it tells there's a need to find better ways of shielding bees, a similar Phys.org report specified.
Temperature Changes Inside Honeybee Colony
According to a similar TechCodex report, Huxter mounted temperature loggers to measure temperature changes inside the honeybee colony every 10 minutes and equipped 18 colonies with two different kinds of insulation.
Six provided were provided with a piece of Styrofoam about two inches thick to function as simple protection at the top of the beehive, which is getting most of the radiant heat coming from the sun.
The beekeeper came up with another way of stabilizing temperatures, a feeder filled with sugar syrup to function as a bee cooling station.
Describing the method, Huxter said bees would naturally search for water to bring back to the hive and fan it with their wings to cool down, which attains evaporative cooling much like humans do when sweating.
Giving the honeybees syrup nearby should let them "do the same thing," explained the beekeeper, and the sugar in it motivates them to take it down quicker.
Related information about honeybees and male worker bees is shown on Frederick Dunn's YouTube Video below:
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