in World News Honeybees ‘Shimmering’ to Warn off Danger Shows God’s Incredible Design
King David exclaimed by the Holy Spirit in the eighth psalm, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”
Many have certainly had that thought when beholding the beauty of the stars, the might of the sea, or the wonder of the forests.
But what about honeybees?
Giant honeybees, despite their name, are of small account when considered one by one.
But as a hive, they display the incredible behavior of rippling across their nests by flashing their abdomens upward in a coordinated way, according to a 2022 report from ScienceNews.
Giant Honeybees form shimmering waves, the behavior is likely in order to deter bee predators (such as hornets) – Thailand pic.twitter.com/OthdXk6C48
— NatureIsAmazing (@OurNatureRocks) February 4, 2024
A study in the Journal of Experimental Biology indicated at the time that the shimmering is most powerful when bees are shown a dark object moving across a lighter background.
Sajesh Vijayan, a behavioral ecologist at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Thiruvananthapuram, ran the experiment with different backgrounds and pieces of circular cardboard.
The shimmering reaction was indeed strongest when a black piece of cardboard, rather than a gray one, was moved across a lighter backdrop, but there was no shimmer when the light piece showed up on a dark backdrop.