Once a class in the Australian outback , giant bees have brutish battles on the arid claypans .
In fact , so do-or-die are the male to mate with the few emerge females that they on a regular basis belt down each other in combat to get the luck , and from time to time some of the females get catch in the crossfire too .
These hot - blooded battles have been caught on film for the next episode ofNatural Born Rebels : A Nature Miniseries , airing on PBS on May 9 .
The insects in question are known asDawson ’s burrowing bees(Amegilla dawsoni ) . While each bee will toil its own nest into the hard priming coat of the arid claypans of Western Australia , the females will frequently aggregate in massive community , sometimes with up to 10,000 individual . By mating only once in their nurture time of year , acute competition is fostered among the males , which infix into a frenzy of fighting that ends in death for every single male person .
Every year , the males go forth from their tunnel a few weeks before the females and get going to patrol the colony of females . It is think that for every female burrowing bee , there are hundreds of males .
But not all the males look the same , with the sexuality being dimorphous in size . Some of the male person develop much larger and are have sex as the majors , while many other males continue humble and become the fry . It is only the majors that cruise the claypans , fighting furiously to pair with newly emerging virgin female . Sometimes the combat between major bees experience so intense that the females they are battle for get tear aside .
Rarely among bee , the female person are not selective in any elbow room with who they mate with . She releases a scent that drive the male into a complete and utter frenzy , turning on each other with brutal and deadly upshot . Only one will make out to carry her off and mate , after having wiped out many others .
The bush league , on the other hired hand , stay out of the fray and police the margin on the observatory for any female that deal to sneak past the majors . oddly , even though up to 90 per centum of all females will couple with the larger major bees , they only make up roughly 20 percentage of the males .
watch out the bee in natural process inNatural Born Rebels : A Nature Miniseriesepisode The Mating Game , airing on May 9 on PBS at 8/7c .
