Uploaded October 2023 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
“A Bee’s Best Defense” is the first in a series of eight poems in the essay Crash, Wave” by Christina Lux, published on UCHRI’s Foundry: uchri.org/foundry/crash-wave
Illustration, animation, and sound by Charles Payne.
The poem was inspired by a ScienceNews article on how giant honeybees work together to defend against aerial threats—predators such as hornets. As they sense an approaching dark object moving against the bright sky, they begin to turn, forming a striking shimmer-wave, and sometimes multiple simultaneous shimmer-waves. This not only confuses the predator, it also alerts fellow bees to danger. The original research by Sajesh Vijayan (Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala), Eric J. Warrant (University of Lund), and Hema Somanathan (Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala) was published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.
“A Bee’s Best Defense” is the first in a series of eight poems in the essay Crash, Wave” by Christina Lux, published on UCHRI’s Foundry: uchri.org/foundry/crash-wave
Illustration, animation, and sound by Charles Payne.
The poem was inspired by a ScienceNews article on how giant honeybees work together to defend against aerial threats—predators such as hornets. As they sense an approaching dark object moving against the bright sky, they begin to turn, forming a striking shimmer-wave, and sometimes multiple simultaneous shimmer-waves. This not only confuses the predator, it also alerts fellow bees to danger. The original research by Sajesh Vijayan (Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala), Eric J. Warrant (University of Lund), and Hema Somanathan (Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala) was published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.
