Honeybees Coat Hive Entrance In Animal Dung To Repel Predators

As a kid, while visiting my grandmother's town, I have seen many poor people (in Tamilnadu) coat the floor of their small house using cow dung. Once the cow dung is dried out, it formed a thin-solid layer, and surprisingly, the house would smell fresh. 

For 46 years, I didn't know the answer to that question except for a good hypothesis that cow dung is rich in 'good' microbiome and in turn, helps keep harmful viruses and bacteria at bay (you can read about it here and video here). 

It looks like that hypothesis is true and even honeybee's use the same trick: 

This “fecal spotting” not only repels giant hornets—it’s the first clear example of tool use in honeybees, says Heather Mattila, an entomologist at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and co-author of the study, published December 9 in the journal PLOS ONE.

Before this study, researchers had not investigated what caused the black marks often seen covering beehive entrances in Vietnam and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Mattila and colleagues verified that the dark material is actually feces of various animals, such as chickens and cows. The researchers also documented that the feces repel a species known as Vespa soror, commonly called giant hornets.

To finally figure out what the bees had been doing “was pretty stunning,” says Mattila, whose research was partially funded by the National Geographic Society. It’s “one of the coolest things our [research] group has ever explored.”

The study takes on even more significance because Vespa soror is the closest relative to Vespa mandarinia, also known as Asian giant hornets, or “murder hornets,” whose recent discovery in the Pacific Northwest has fueled worldwide intrigue.

Understanding how the Vietnamese bee behavior repels hornet attacks could have applications for protecting honeybees in other countries, including the United States, Mattila says.

And I have seen people step on elephant poop for the same reason. Ancients had good wisdom passed on for generations. Science slowly proves it right but you don't have to wait until science proves it. 

Biodiversity and protecting all our fellow creatures is the only important task we have. Economy and money are man-made bullshit will never stand the test of time.