The Rise And Rise Of Bees: Now They Can Clear Landmines

Their brains are the size of a sesame seed, they have sex with flowers and vomit honey. So to be fair, you could be forgiven for letting your daily life pass by with nary a thought for the chance of a bee apocalypse ending your days on Earth. But for thousands of years, they have lived among us, watching us. Learning our ways. And we, theirs. Watchers who caught this week's news that can smell explosives won't be surprised. For the rest, it's time you took a primer, because it's becoming obvious that the world's bees aren't going to take this whole Colony Collapse Disorder thing lying down. Here's why:

Bees can clear landmines

"It is not a problem for a bee to learn the smell of an explosive, which it can then search.”

- Zagreb University honey expert Nikola Kezic

Also, by flying over them.

They can destroy an opponent by heating it with their brains

It’s called heatballing. Japanese honeybees swarm an opponent and by vibrating their wings together, can raise the opponents body temperature to precisely 46C, enough to kill it without killing themselves.

They don’t take risks

Bees have been found to exhibit pessimism, a higher cognitive trait otherwise found only in intelligent mammals.

When uncertain situations arise, they assume the worst.

“Way, way back, we share a common ancestor. The basic physiology of the brain has been retained over evolutionary time. There are basic similarities.”

- Newcastle University researcher Melissa Bateson

They kill just as many people in the UK than terrorists

“The annualised average of five deaths caused by terrorism in England and Wales over this period compares with total accidental deaths in 2010 of 17,201, including 123 cyclists killed in traffic accidents, 102 personnel killed in Afghanistan, 29 people drowned in the bathtub and five killed by stings from hornets, wasps and bees.”

- Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation barrister David Anderson

They have no respect for religion

“The temple abbot said 76 novice monks were stung and rushed to three hospitals in central Chiang Mai.

“Fifty three monks were admitted to Maharaj Nakorn Chiang Mai Hospital. Nineteen of them were in serious condition.

“The monks were carrying out their routine clean-up of the temple ground and had had no problem with the bees before.”

Bees are pop culture guerrillas

In Switzerland last year, only Skyfall made more at the box office than bee documentary More Than Honey.

They can kill cancer

Sort of.

Oh, and HIV.

“A toxin called melittin found in bee venom can destroy HIV by poking holes in the envelope surrounding the virus.”

- Washington University

You’re not even safe in your Volvo

"The mass of buzzing insects trapped a little girl and her parents in the vehicle."

They can count to four

“Our findings provide evidence that bees are capable of counting objects on the way to a food source.”

- Professor Mandyam Srinivasan, University of Queensland's Brain Institute

And what’s with all that dancing?

Bees get excited about a lot of things humans get excited about – food, a great new place to live, the possibility of sex.

And danger, which it can warn the home swarm about by doing a little kind of bee Hokey-Pokey. And like a kind of camp version of the Warning Beacons of Gondor, it can be transmitted instantly bee-to-bee over a distance of three miles per bee.

Basically, before you can power on, slide to unlock and redial.

And bees can see it because they have five eyes which rotate 280 degrees. And the dance language is cross-cultural.

Bees are stronger than ants, even

Bees have been known to carry pollen 122 times their own weight, without the use of BigDog or HULC.

Ants struggle with paltry payloads just 50 times their own weight, and they don’t even fly.

Unless they’re flying ants.

Bees are smarter than supercomputers

Well, crap ones that take days to solve the travelling salesman problem.

Bees can find the shortest route between several locations in a heartbeat.

How? We still don’t know. THEY JUST DO.