Un-BEE-lievable! Man transports bee colony by holding the queen in his fist and letting the insects swarm over his arm as he walks through the streets
- A Dominican beekeeper adopted an extreme method to transport a colony
- Shocking footage shows the man with thousands of bees covering his entire arm
- The worker appears unfazed as he leisurely walks past the street with the swarm
- He says he was holding the queen bee in his fist, attracting the insects to follow
A beekeeper has been filmed transporting a bee colony by carrying the queen in his fist while thousands of the insects swarmed over his entire arm.
Social media footage shows the worker in the Dominican Republic, seemingly unfazed, leisurely walking down the street with his left arm covered by bees.
The man explained that he wouldn’t get stung by the insects as they were following the queen bee inside his fist.
Social media footage shows the worker in the Dominican Republic, seemingly unfazed, leisurely walking down the street with his left arm covered by the army of bees
In the video, the beekeeper tells the camera that he was transporting the colony and putting them in a box, according to UNILAD.
When the cameraman asks the beekeeper why he doesn’t get stung by the bee, the man replies: ‘They know their owner.’
‘And do you have the queen on your hand? Because they are where their queen is,’ says the man who is filming the footage.
‘Yes. I have it in my fist,’ the beekeeper confirms.
The footage has also sparked a discussion on Reddit as people wondered how the Dominican beekeeper managed to transport the colony this way.
One user explained that the swarming occurs when a new queen bee emerges, a chunk of the previous colony breaks off to start a new hive.
This is the shocking moment a beekeeper in the Dominican Republic transported a bee colony by carrying the queen in his fist while thousands of the insects swarmed over his entire arm
‘At this point, the bee swarm looks absolutely scary but it’s the most docile ever because it’s only looking for a new home while protecting the queen,’ the user said.
‘Since the queen, in this case, doesn’t feel threatened and isn’t being harmed, the rest of the swarm just follows along.’
Others suspected that the insects didn’t attack the beekeeper as they could smell the queen’s pheromones signalling that she was not being harmed.
Pheromones are mixtures of chemical substances released by individual honeybees into the hive or environment to express behaviour changes or physiology of others of the same species.
Bees have one of the most sophisticated pheromone-driven communication systems in all of nature, with all three castes having the ability to signal other bees through pheromones.
The Queen Mandibular Pheromone (QMP) is considered to be the most important set of pheromones in the colony. It can affect social behaviour, maintenance of the hive, swarming as well as mating behaviour.