> 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