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Short Wave

Why are bees special? We get inside a hive to find out

Short Wave

NPR

News, Life Sciences, Astronomy, Daily News, Nature, Science

4.76.5K Ratings

🗓️ 7 April 2026

⏱️ 13 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In a new National Geographic docuseries, viewers get a look inside a bee hive. The series is called Secrets of the Bees — and since there’s nobody we know who loves bees more than entomologist Sammy Ramsey, we brought him on the show to share some of these secrets. We cover how bees play together (yes, play!), their ability to fend off predators four-times their size and a mite wreaking havoc on honeybees everywhere. 

If you liked this episode check out past episodes on liquid gold (a.k.a honey), and honeybees

Email us your questions about insects, critters – or anything else to do with science at shortwave@npr.org. We may turn it into an episode in the future!

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Transcript

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0:00.0

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

0:06.0

Nobody I know loves bees or sings cover songs about them quite like Sammy Ramsey.

0:11.9

I've got so much honey that bees envy me. I got a sweetest song than the birds in the trees.

0:24.4

Sammy is an entomologist and a producer on the new National Geographic docus series,

0:29.3

Secrets of the Bees. Everyone, I have never been so taken with bee footage in my life.

0:35.1

I'm talking up-close video of bees living and working together

0:38.3

and fending off predators like Vespamanderinia or the northern giant hornet.

0:43.3

Those things are absolute tanks. They are units. To be able to have mouths that can chew through

0:48.8

wood, stingers that are a quarter of an inch long, and the capacity to squirt venom out of their

0:56.0

stinger while they're flying into your eyes is just wild.

0:59.9

And I asked Sammy to watch one key scene of the docu-series with me, where a murder hornet scopes

1:05.0

out a hive filled with Asian honeybees. The hornet hovers menacingly, golden wings of blur. And she is aware that there is a huge

1:13.6

volume of protein available in this colony. And this murder hornet is a scout. She rubs her

1:20.0

abdomen on the hive to mark it with a chemical scent. She's basically dropping a pin, like on Google

1:25.5

maps, so that she can see where it is,

1:28.3

but also so that all of her sisters can get back there and rip that colony apart.

1:33.3

But to convince her squadron to come and attack this hive, she first wants to grab a bee

1:40.3

to bring back to her murder hornet family.

1:42.3

They'll grab a bee, chop it up into what we call in a very loving way, a bee meatball.

1:47.2

They'll take this bee meatball back to their colony, and baby, they are handing out Costco-free samples.

1:53.6

So your only way to save the lives of yourself, your sisters, and your mom is to kill that scout.

2:02.0

She cannot leave.

...

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