> I wonder whether there are one or several mechanisms to balling. We are
> all familiar with balling the Queen, but I understand that a similar
> thing occurs when bees fight off Hornets as I'm told that the bees'
> stings are unable to penetrate the Hornets 'armour', so they use
> suffocation by balling as their defence.  I think balling of the Queen
> mostly occurs when the bees are distressed, e.g., by us as intruders,
> so do they just get confused or panicked, or is there more to it than
> that?
 
I wonder if balling a queen rather than stinging, evolved so that it was
pretty much "agreed on" that the queen must die.  Imagine what would happen
if a bee drifted to another colony, made it in and quickly encountered
the queen (who would be quite strange to it)....
 
-Mike