Baffling Viral Video Shows Ants Carrying Flowers to a Dead Bee

[Judi Lynn]

(Nicole Webinger)


What weird 'ritual' is this?

JACINTA BOWLER 22 AUG 2018

It looks like something out of a sad fairy tale. Tiny ants are pulling over petals, making a pile, and on top rests a dead bumblebee.

The original video was posted by Minnesota resident Nicole Webinger, but has since been taken down - although there's no shortage of copies proliferating across the internet.

"Saw this outside of my work by the garden. There was a dead bumblebee, and we were watching the ants bring flower petals and leaving them around the bumblebee," she wrote in a post accompanying the video, according to reshareworthy.

"It looked like they were having a funeral for it."

More:
https://www.sciencealert.com/what-is-really-happening-in-this-video-of-ants-giving-a-bee-a-funeral

[KT2000]

1. calling E. O. Wilson

I hope he has seen this.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

2. Perhaps the flower neutralizes the bee poison? Or preserves the bee for later?

[eShirl]

3. It's a warning to other bees.

"Don't fck with ants."

[eppur_se_muova]

4. Covering up the smell of the corpse ?

That's what frankincense was used for.

With the coming of a preference for interment over open-air cremation, the frankincense trade all but disappeared.

[Javaman]

5. the article goes on to say that the bee is probably blocking the entrance to the ant hill...

and the ants can't get in with their petals.

that's asphalt.