Vulture bees: The hive is made of flesh, and the honey is made of meat. Irregular bees that collect carrion instead of pollen (7 photos)

Are there any irregular bees? Oh yes, and what others! Next to them, even American killer bees and bumblebees look like exemplary black and yellow buzzers. Meet vulture bees, insects that make the wrong honey!





Vulture bees belong to the genus Trigon, all 32 species of which are frankly bells and whistles. These small black bees disregarded ancient traditions and abandoned the poisonous sting! But their jaws have become larger and stronger, and with such tools it’s not scary to squeeze food from competitors. Trigons are engaged in taking food on a regular basis. Sometimes skirmishes for provisions escalate into pitched hive-to-hive battles; many brave fighters die in such battles.



Despite the repulsive antics, most stingless bees pollinate ordinary flowers and only sometimes switch to all sorts of nasty things like rot and flesh. But 3 species of South American insects became so frostbitten that their meat, which was not fresh enough, became the main source of calories; they turned into real scavengers.





Carrion is carrion, but watermelon is still delicious.

For fights over flesh, arthropod vultures have grown huge jaws, but they are of little use in food: the mouthparts of bees are not adapted for swallowing large pieces. They simply regurgitate gastric juice onto the food and wait for it to turn the meat fibers into digested mush. The process is not fast, to speed it up, the bees choose vulnerable places, such as eyes, wounds and physiological openings. Well, if you disturb them, the insects will use the same tactics on you, even though you are still alive.



Things have gone so far that they have lost the ability to transfer pollen and produce beebread from it. Instead of animal pollen, they use cadaveric extract. At least they still store honey. Don't worry, during the creation of sweet reserves, not a single flower lost its nectar.



Such an immoral lifestyle also influenced architectural preferences. The nests of these sinners most closely resemble the nests of Aliens. A shapeless pile of round cocoons is intertwined with artistically twisted dried snot and can evoke a feeling of disgust in any observer.



In these round eggs, the NZ of corpse beebread is stored, and the larvae are grown. There is honey there too, but would you dare try it? These creepy creatures excrete it in the same way they eat spoiled meat.



But someone is selling it too!

However, let's not judge bees for their strange eating habits. Scavengers save our world from the omnipresent smell of rotting flesh and terrible epidemics. Yes, and we ourselves have a stigma, we don’t feed on pollen from flower meadows.