arun’s blog

Bee hives are highly impervious to intrusions. We are of course the masters of destruction and could easily damage them; however, we are also aware of the withering effects which are almost immediate and catastrophic. For the sake of amusement, some of you might remember the cartoon “The Popeye show”, where in one particular episode, the bees infuriated by Popeye’s accidental damage to the hive start chasing him. Tired of running and perspiring excessively, he hides behind a bush, when the bees tween into the shape of scissors and trims the bush to his body outline, puncturing him.

Now that being said, I came across this extremely interesting piece of information that even honey-bees are vulnerable to hackers!! The hive beetle Aethina tumida surpasses the tight security detail infesting the hives and killing the bees. How they execute this invasion remained obscure until now. A research group at Kenya seems to have cleared the obfuscations involved with perspicuous explanations from their scientific conclusions. Bees are known to communicate using pheromones. These hive beetles seem to exploit this and alarm the pheromones against themselves. The beetles are highly sensitive to Isopentyl acetate which is a marker of the stress levels of bees supposedly. And fortunate enough for these cranky little bastards, they are able to produce this same alarm chemical from a strain of yeast they carry, allowing them to execute their veneficial attacks. This makes the bees highly disoriented, turning against themselves, while more beetles start arriving for a hefty dinner…