Bees are usually thought of as insects that gather nectar and pollen, but in addition to those bees, there are a few rare species of bees that have developed a very different method of surviving.
Vulture bees make their living by eating decaying animal carcasses instead of gathering pollen and nectar from flowers. These bees are found in the mostly tropical forests of Central and South America. Vulture bees are an uncommon example of how bees can make unusual dietary shifts in the insect world.Vulture bees are the only types of bees that don’t use pollen to feed their nests or hives. Vulture bees find dead animals, tear them apart with their powerful mandibles, and then carry pieces of the meat back to their nests for food for the bees. This behaviour challenges the common understanding of bees as plant-dependent insects and highlights how species can adapt to new ecological niches when resources are limited.
How vulture bees adapted to a meat-based diet
Vulture bees are part of a small number of bees in the Trigona genus, and have a very small number of species that feed their mouthparts solely to extract flesh from carcasses. Unlike other bees, they are not adapted to collect pollen, but use their mandibles and chew to break open the flesh of dead animals.
Once the vulture bee has collected meat, it brings the meat back to the hive and turns it into a protein-rich material, which is used in place of pollen as a food source. The protein material is stored in special feeding chambers and given to developing larvae in the nest. This allows the vulture bee colony to continue to live without floral resources.
Unique gut bacteria allow them to digest carrion
The capability of vulture bees to feed on decomposed meat is achieved through significant modifications in their physiological processes. In a study, “Why Did the Bee Eat the Chicken? Symbiont Gain, Loss, and Retention in the Vulture Bee Microbiome“, the scientists revealed that these bees possess a unique gut microbial community, which is distinct from that of other bees.Researchers have observed that the vulture bee’s guts contain acid-producing bacteria, which produce high levels of acidity in their guts. These microbes assist in breaking down decaying animal tissue and also help to protect against pathogens present in the carcasses. In addition, this research highlights the fact that vulture bees in the course of evolution have lost some of their key microorganisms that are common among flower-feeding bees while gaining new bacteria that could adapt better to their feeding habits. This means that alteration in the gut microbiota of the vulture bees represents a vital adjustment that enables the bees to obtain energy from a toxic source of food.
How their feeding behaviour differs from that of other bees
To find animal remains, vulture bees rely primarily on their exceptional sense of smell. When they detect the smell of carrion, they will often enter through soft openings like the eye sockets. Once harvested, worker bees consume the collected meat, said to have been only partially digested at this stage, then store it for further processing.Vulture bees make a protein-rich substance from the meat and do not produce true honey, unlike honeybees. Although some do collect sugars from other trees or plants that they also feed on. Nonetheless, whether obtained from carrion or plant material, protein comes predominantly from various types of dead animals.
Why this discovery matters for evolution and ecology
The presence of vulture bees shows how species can adapt to extremely different diets due to external factors such as competition in the environment.
By no longer relying on the nectar or pollen of flowers, vulture bees have taken on the role of scavengers- filling a new ecological role. This change also provides important insights into both the impact of changing food sources on the evolutionary process, as well as how gut microbiomes allow for the ability of an organism to begin eating from wholly different food sources than previously used.
