Honeybees rely on plant pollen as a protein-packed food source. And some are even willing to steal from other bees to get it.
Pollen stealing has been seen before, in the United States. But now, researchers in Italy have also observed honeybees snatching pollen off the backs of bumblebees. The observations, published December 21 in Apidologie, are among the most extensive documentation of bee-on-bee larceny to date.
On a summer trip in 2019 to Mount Antola, in the northern Italian region of Liguria, independent naturalists Tiziano Londei and Giuliana Marzi, both based in Milan, recorded video of what they thought were honeybees (Apis mellifera) trying to push bumblebees off
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