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Science
Related: About this forumBaffling Viral Video Shows Ants Carrying Flowers to a Dead Bee
(Nicole Webinger)
What weird 'ritual' is this?
JACINTA BOWLER 22 AUG 2018
It looks like something out of a sad fairy tale. Tiny ants are pulling over petals, making a pile, and on top rests a dead bumblebee.
The original video was posted by Minnesota resident Nicole Webinger, but has since been taken down - although there's no shortage of copies proliferating across the internet.
"Saw this outside of my work by the garden. There was a dead bumblebee, and we were watching the ants bring flower petals and leaving them around the bumblebee," she wrote in a post accompanying the video, according to reshareworthy.
"It looked like they were having a funeral for it."
More:
https://www.sciencealert.com/what-is-really-happening-in-this-video-of-ants-giving-a-bee-a-funeral
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Baffling Viral Video Shows Ants Carrying Flowers to a Dead Bee (Original Post)
Judi Lynn
Aug 2018
OP
Perhaps the flower neutralizes the bee poison? Or preserves the bee for later?
Bernardo de La Paz
Aug 2018
#2
KT2000
(20,586 posts)1. calling E. O. Wilson
I hope he has seen this.
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,033 posts)2. Perhaps the flower neutralizes the bee poison? Or preserves the bee for later?
eShirl
(18,502 posts)3. It's a warning to other bees.
"Don't fck with ants."
eppur_se_muova
(36,281 posts)4. Covering up the smell of the corpse ?
That's what frankincense was used for.
With the coming of a preference for interment over open-air cremation, the frankincense trade all but disappeared.
Javaman
(62,533 posts)5. the article goes on to say that the bee is probably blocking the entrance to the ant hill...
and the ants can't get in with their petals.
that's asphalt.