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Bees, bees.
They are just about one of the only winged insects in the animal kingdom that exists can sting you,
but that people actually tolerate, for the most part.
And in fact, many of us love bees, as they're not only kind of adorable,
but they're also just about one of the most important animals out there when it comes to our own
well-being, as long as you're not allergic, that is.
And this is primarily because they pollinate over a third of the world's entire food crops,
and their actions contribute to about $160 billion annually for global agriculture.
And without them, it's believed that many, many people would die, and civilization would take a good beating.
So I would say that's a pretty good reason alone to love them.
And like I said, it also helps that some of them actually look kind of cute.
Four, a bug bet is.
Which is probably best exemplified by the mascot of all bees.
The bumblebee, a fuzzy little group of over 250 different species,
that in many cases bear a pretty cool pattern and is one of the most recognizable insects out there,
even having their own animated movie dedicated to them.
However, bumblebees have lied to you.
In fact, all bees have lied.
Because while most people believe that bees equal good and wholesome, that doesn't actually
apply to all of them.
After all, the word bee itself isn't just one large genus.
It's any of the winged species that belong to the clay known as antiphila.
And in total, this extends over 20,000 known species, with just two of them being the ones
responsible for pollinating over 80% of crops.
So talk about carrying the team.
And now, this isn't to say that the other 98% are just bad cookies, but a few of them
kind of are. And there's actually a handful of bees out there that don't just follow their
own rules, but are the exact opposite of what you expect from relatives of bumblebees,
operating more like animals you'd expect to see in some sort of horror movie. And one of the most
prominent examples of this has something to do with a type of bee that is responsible for a substance
often referred to as meat, honey. Yes, that is first name meat, last name honey. But before I can
dive into that, I need to first introduce you to its crater. The Vulture Bees
In remote parts of South America, within rainforests and jungles, you will find this group,
a small band of three very closely related species of bees that all belong to the genus known as
trigona, with the species specifically being trigonacroscopes, necrophagia, and hypogee.
And on the surface, these three species are pretty standard trigona bees, being quite
small between 8 and 22 millimeters long, brown in color, and thankfully stingless.
And you'll mostly find them in the same kind of environments as their relatives too,
which is to say areas that are warmer, dark, and moist.
And in their case, this usually is tree hollows, abandoned termite nests, or even underground,
where they set up hives of similar hierarchical structures to that of normal bees,
where there being a queen, worker, drone, and finally the larva.
But past this point, the similarities abruptly end,
and things start getting a bit more unsettling,
especially once it becomes time for supper in their hives.
Now, most trigona bees are rather ordinary,
feasting on pollen and nectar from over 500 different plant species,
just like many other bees do.
So pretty standard.
But these three species, on the other hand,
they have no interest in the usual goods.
And if you took a good look at one of the species names,
the necrophagia, you may already have an idea of what they prefer to chow down on.
And that would be flesh.
Yes, meat eating bees is a real thing
and has actually been a thing for longer than scientists' first thought.
As despite being aware of these three species' existence for hundreds of years,
it was only in the 1980s that the researchers realized
that these bees were gobbling up meat, not plant matter.
Although, we aren't talking about just any kind of meat, no, no, this meat would be rotting flesh.
Yummy, and this is also why they're commonly nicknamed the vulture bees.
So basically, if you put a fresh sirloin in front of one of these guys, you're going to get a no thank you.
But a decaying corpse, then it's an all-you-can-eat buffet.
An observation on these bees find that often, how they like to shout down, is by tunneling straight through the carcasses' eyes,
giving them behind-the-scenes access to Mietopia.
Additionally, like many flies, vulture bees accomplish the feet of actually.
ingesting the rotting flesh by vomiting up saliva that is chock full of specialized digestive enzymes,
which then helped break down the decomposing flesh into a delicious homemade soup that can be then slurped down.
And in many cases, the feeding process only gets more nauseating from here on out, if that's even possible.
As if the vulture being questioned as a forager, they don't just let this massicated goop hit their
stomachs quite yet, as after all it would be quite rude not to share it with their friends and family,
which technically all their friends are family, but you get the point. So what these beads instead do,
is store this meat slime within their crops, which is a simple name for a thin-walled portion
of their elementary tract, where the goop can then comfortably sit without being further digested.
After that, the goods are then transported back to their hives, where they then invoke
their professional level vomiting skills, by regurgitating not saliva this time, but instead
the mashed-up meat goo, which is then neatly stored into various pots embedded within the hive.
And so by now, you should probably be feeling a bit queasy, and if you aren't, don't worry,
because the vulture bees still have a few more tricks of their sleeves, or rather wings.
You see, once this concoction is safely within their storage pots, it will sit there to age,
and then over time be consumed by the other bees in the hive,
specifically the worker bees who eat it straight,
and they rely on their highly acidic guts to break down the rotten meat.
In fun fact, this acid is actually about 35% stronger than the stomach acid found in strictly vegetarian bees,
which makes a lot of sense, as there really has to be,
in order to prevent the rotten flesh from killing the bee outright from food poisoning.
And funny enough, just like their namesake, the reason why its stomach is acidic is similar to that of vultures and hyenas,
with the vulture bees possessing specific bacteria in their stomachs, which have strong acid production capability.
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And while these guys are feasting, it seems that they're kind of messy eaters,
as some of this bacteria is then also transmitted to the storage pots overall,
which is thought to be actually helpful as it serves to help the food goop from spoiling
over time and poisoning the entire colony.
So clearly, this acid is useful, and its breaking down the rotten concoction inside their
stomachs is also the first step into making the star of the show.
And that would be, of course, the vulture bee's infamous meitani.
As after it's been partially digested, the workers will then internally, meaning inside their
bodies, store this newly digested form inside their hypofranchial glands.
where they then brew this stew into yet another new type of dish,
which in normal bees would be their honey.
However, given that this brew has used rotten skin,
eyeballs, flesh, guts, and organs instead of plant material,
what ends up being regurgitated at the final stage
is not the honey as we imagine it,
but rather again the substance known as meat honey.
And shocker, contrary to what the name would have you believe,
this stuff isn't really honey.
And telling it apart from real honey is perhaps not surprisingly quite easy,
as almost everything about it is different.
For starters, meat honey is much thicker than regular honey, starting off as being completely
paste-like, but slowly becoming a viscous fluid over time as it ages and matures, well then the
color is typically a translucent white, lacking those beautiful shades of amber, gold, and brown
that we are so used to.
Although I should warn you that in some cases the batch can take on certain shades of yellow,
so if someone was hard to sight and probably smell, then they might confuse it.
Yet, even then, if they got some of this stuff in their mouths, like even an infinitesimally
small drop, they'd know straight away this wasn't the good old Winnie the Pooh stuff, as the very
few people, who questionably have tried this stuff, have described the flavors being extremely
intense, salty, but at the same time weirdly sweet, emphasis on the weird part. And then on top of all
of that, very, very smoky. And while smoky, salty, and sweet don't necessarily sound that bad,
in this case, they don't pair that well. With many of the testers stating that meat honey is not
for the faint-hearted. And why these bees chose meat honey over regular honey, maybe
quite the questionable decision to some, but ultimately it's a vital part of the survival,
as this substance is highly calorically dense and rich in protein, and is the main way the colonies
feed themselves, with virtually all the larvae being raised upon it. What's pretty interesting
is that, while its main purpose is food, the vulture bees do like to spice things up from time
to time. As in some of the vulture bees, such as trigona hypogia, there are reported cases where
occasionally colonies will actually use plant material, such as sweet products, to give a more unique
profile to the meat honey, mixing it in with the rest of the batter, so to speak.
Strangely, when this happens, they also tend to let the mixture for a longer period than normal,
which supposedly helps to contribute to an overall more sweet-tasting and deep profile.
So clearly, these guys are truly nature's gourmet chefs, even if they probably wouldn't win any Michelin starts than me.
However, like even the best of chefs, and certainly like me,
these bees sometimes get tired of all the effort it takes to make their food,
and occasionally are known to opt for quicker ways to obtain sustenance.
And one of these ways is another first for be kind, and not in a good way.
is vulture bees and many other members of trigona for that matter are capable of predatory behaviors
something not seen in any other kind of bee and over the years researchers have caught these guys
preying upon the eggs of frogs and i don't know about you but for some reason the idea that bees
with a boogeyman to frogs isn't exactly something i'd imagine but then i guess neither was meat-honey
and yet here we are and they dispose of these eggs with the same tool they use to consume their goop
which is a pair of remarkably sharp and durable mandibles that can slice and chew simultaneously
and are composed of something called Kiten, aka, Hardin changes sugar and protein.
Now, yes, every bee has mandibles.
But the vultry bee is unique in that theirs are relatively sharper and more durable than those seen in most other species.
And thus, while they are stingless, they are much more capable of inflicting a painful and damaging bite.
And therefore, you wouldn't necessarily have to see this bee to know that it wasn't one of the normies, so to speak.
You definitely feel it instead.
But whatever the case, their decision to toss a vegetarian diet out the window and die phase first into the wrong,
realm in the meat eater, it seemed to pay it off for them massively, as of all the vulture
bee species known of currently, not a single one is considered endangered, despite facing the
same risk than many other animals and bees have, given that humans do live in its general
vicinity, with habitat loss, controlled fires, and pollution all being real threats. And yet,
they seem to be doing just fine, with each colony sometimes also having a population of up to
100,000 strong. So it definitely appears that their gamble with questionable culinary choices
has ended up paying off. But this all then begs the question.
As to why did these bees even need to forsake their usual grub in the first place?
Well, some researchers believe that it simply comes down to its environment.
As one study that analyzed local habitats of vulture bees
found that they often lived in forested areas,
where protein sources from plants were surprisingly rare.
And thus this might have forced these guys for many generations
to drop their stingers, bulk up their jaws,
and mate the leap to meet, or rather, fly to meet.
And the even more interesting idea speculates that it actually might have come down
to that acid-producing bacteria in their guts.
Now, to understand this, you have to understand that it's been known that the microbiome
of an animal can actually influence their evolution, and therefore the idea is that here,
they acquired this bacteria in higher volumes, which thus allowed them to then eat something,
which they normally could not, and ultimately slowly pushing the evolutionary needle,
just enough that they eventually became what we know them as today.
However, I will mention this hypothesis is not as strongly supported, so take it with a grain
of salt, or a grain of meat honey.
And actually, it's not just their bacteria, mandibles, and lack of stinger,
that has been a result of their diet, but also their fuzziness, or rather lack thereof.
As it turns out that being fuzzy isn't that efficient for a meat eater's life, or at least in the case
of the vulture bees. You see, many bees are fuzzy not to be cute, shocker, I know, but rather
because it helps them to collect thousands of pollen grains, acting a bit like a velcro to which the pollen
can attach to. But of course, since vulture bees don't really rely on pollen, being fuzzy is therefore
or not that useful, and perhaps maybe actively problematic if you're always being covered in blood
and whatever other group you might find inside a rotting potty.
And therefore, instead of spending the energy on developing fuzziness, it can be spent elsewhere,
and that's explaining why they're always so clean-shaven.
So yeah, truly an enigma among be kind.
And I hope their resilience to humans continues throughout the years, because while I can't say I want to try meat honey personally,
I do think the idea of them existing is pretty dang cool, in a weird, horror movie-esque, kind of way.
Anyways, thanks for watching, and until next time.
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