Bees do not typically hunt and consume healthy adult bees as a predatory behavior. However, there are specific circumstances where bees consume other bees, often driven by the colony’s survival, resource management, or hygienic needs. These instances are part of the complex social dynamics within a bee colony, ensuring its health and efficiency.
Colony Clean-Up and Resource Recovery
Honey bee colonies exhibit hygienic behavior, where worker bees actively manage hive cleanliness. This involves detecting and removing dead or diseased brood and adult bees, preventing pathogen spread and maintaining colony health.
When a bee dies, undertaker bees often carry it out. However, the colony may sometimes consume dead or dying individuals, especially weaker adults or larvae. This consumption reclaims valuable nutrients like protein, serving as resource recovery, particularly during limited external resources.
Targeted Consumption Within the Hive
Bees engage in specific instances of consumption involving living, often non-productive or weak, individuals within their own colony. This behavior is a strategic action for hive survival and resource allocation.
One example is the expulsion and consumption of drones, male bees, as winter approaches. Drones are primarily needed for mating, and as foraging resources become scarce, worker bees evict them. Weakened or newly dead drones may then be consumed, providing protein recycled for the colony’s benefit.
Larvae consumption, or nutritional cannibalism, also occurs during stress like pollen shortages, disease, or overcrowding. Nurse bees may consume younger larvae or eggs to recycle proteins and nutrients. This reallocates resources to support the queen and other developing brood, ensuring the survival of viable members. Severely sick or malformed bees might also be consumed as a hygienic measure, preventing illness spread.
External Factors and Robbing Behavior
Bees from one colony sometimes consume bees from another, typically in situations involving competition or conflict, rather than predatory hunting. This inter-colony interaction is often seen during “robbing” events.
Robbing occurs when bees from stronger colonies invade weaker or resource-poor colonies to steal honey and other stored resources. During these aggressive encounters, fights can break out. The defeated or dead bees from the weaker colony may be consumed by the victorious robbing bees. This is not primarily about predation, but a form of resource acquisition, utilizing protein and other nutrients from vanquished bees, especially when external food sources are scarce.