'Vulture bees' feed their babies rotting meat instead of pollen - Business Insider

They gathered the flesh in little baskets on their hind legs, where other bees collect pollen, or swallowed the meat to store in their stomachs.

The bees were preparing to carry the chicken back to their hives, where they would enclose the meat chunks in pods, leave them there for two weeks, then feed them to their babies.

Literally what differentiates them from wasps has been that they're vegetarian," Maccaro said.

That's why Maccaro's colleagues were baiting and capturing these mysterious bees — to study the microbes in their guts and learn how they're able to eat carrion.

Sure enough, the researchers discovered that vulture bees' guts may be more like actual vultures or hyenas than their pollen-gathering relatives.

The chicken bait attracted an array of bees — one species that only collects meat, and several that collect both meat and pollen.

That allowed them to compare the guts of carnivorous, omnivorous, and vegetarian bees.

The microbes in those guts were quite different.

They want to study what happens in the pods where the vulture bees store meat before feeding it to their larvae

"They store them and they seal them and they don't touch them for two weeks, and then they can eat the meat," Maccaro said