The extremely hot weather in the UK apparently poses a particular problem for the local population of honey bees, whose males now have to deal with the prospect of a rather gruesome death.
According to The Daily Star, many male honey bees in Britain are expected to meet their end as temperatures breached 40 degrees Celsius this week, with the creatures winding up explosively ejaculating and dying when subjected to extreme heat.
“We don’t know exactly why but drones ejaculate when they get too stressed,” explained Dr. Alison McAfee, postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia’s Michael Smith Laboratories. “Ejaculation kills them because it basically eviscerates their abdomen. This happens during natural mating too – drone honey bees always die after mating.”
Since male honey bees possess only half of the chromosomes a worker honey bee has, they are more susceptible to pesticides and severe heat, the newspaper points out.
If a significant number of male honey bees end up perishing amid the summer heat, it may pose a problem for the population of the insects in the country, as queens may struggle to find males to mate with.