Australian Bees 'Play a Game of Thrones'

Here's something you don't hear every day. The months-long Australian bee war is finally over. According to a recent field study, two different species of stingless bees had been fighting over the right to occupy a single hive for generations. Who says insects and humans can't relate?

The study, recently published in The American Naturalist, details how a species of small Australian bees native to Brisbane, called Tetragonula carbonaria, are under frequent siege from swarms of an entirely different species that hails from further north, Tetragonula hockingsi.

According to the study, researchers from Brisbane in Australia, and Oxford, UK, paid special attention to one war which had been waged right outside a T. carbonaria hive from July through October in 2008. Three massive waves of T. hockingsi workers aimed for the hive, and an armada of T. carbonaria workers took to the air to protect their home.

Eventually, the sieging swarm was victorious, disposing of the hive's old queen to install one of their own, but only after many months of tireless clashes.

"These bees were playing a Game of Thrones," the observing researchers commented.

Amazingly, researcher Paul Cunningham says that this was far from an isolated incident. This kind of thing has been happening all over Australia for years.

"And around this time of year, people see these big swarms outside the trees or around their houses. They're fighting swarms," Cunningham told BBC News. "If you stand under the swarm, you can see these bees dropping out of the air. They've grabbed hold of each other in this death grip - they're locked together, and both the bees die."

To figure out how often this kind of turf war occurs, Cunningham's team conducted a survey of 260 hives around the city for the next five years. They found 46 examples of hive turn-over, suggesting that these wars are quite common.

The researchers are quick to point out that this is an excellent example of how little we actually know about small stingless bees, which can be an excellent and resilient alternative to declining honey bee populations.

"If we're going to really use and manipulate these bees in the future, we need to understand what their behavior is and how they maintain territories," Cunningham added.