A honey bee colony survives a gauntlet of pests, predators and diseases. This cutaway hive lets you dial up three of the most consequential real threats — Varroa destructor mites, the Asian hornet (Vespa velutina) and wax moth larvae — and watch the colony's health and behaviour respond.
A hornet-balling defence can push the core temperature inside the bee cluster past 45°C — hot enough to kill the hornet while the bees themselves tolerate the heat, a trick first documented in Japanese honey bees defending against giant hornets.
A cutaway beehive lets you dial up Varroa mite load, Asian hornet pressure and wax moth infestation independently, then watch colony health, thermal hornet-balling defence and comb damage respond in real time.
Each threat degrades the colony through a different mechanism — direct parasitism and virus transmission from mites, predation pressure and stress from hornets, and structural comb destruction from wax moth larvae — while beekeeper IPM intervention blunts all three at once.
Move the three threat sliders and watch mites appear on brood cells, hornets circle the entrance, and webbing spread across the comb. Push hornet pressure high enough to trigger guard bees balling and overheating an attacker, then flip on IPM treatment to see damage fall.
Varroa destructor jumped from the Asian honey bee to the western honey bee in the 20th century and is now considered the single biggest driver of colony losses worldwide, largely through the viruses it vectors.