Piranha Bees (scientific name Serrasalmus Hymenoptera) are vicious predators found in all habitable regions of Sector Prime temperate planets. Growing up to ten centimeters in length, a swarm of these black metallic insects can stun and devour an entire Fuzzy Lummox in seven seconds. Piranha Bee honey is a potent aphrodisiac. Dragonettes are their only natural enemies, though they have many unnatural enemies in the form of various beings trying to steal their honey for use as an aphrodisiac.
Piranha Bee eyes are multifaceted, and each is set within a gelatinous ovoid of green bioluminescent material. When prey is sighted, and "tasted," its eyes flash brightly alerting other scouts and sentries nearby, all the way back to the hive. The resulting swarm response is immediate. Each massive hive holds fifty or more scouts and over one thousand hunters. Piranha bee scouts are able to search a ten kilometer range for sources of meat. When suitable prey is located, hundreds of hunters swarm to the feeding site.
Piranha Bees use their four rasped mandibles, which exude a potent anaesthetic, to rip its victim's flesh to shreds. The meat is then forced at a rapid rate down its neck and into its bulb-shaped gullet by spring-like metallic bands. When sated, Piranha Bees detach from their victims and returns to the hive where their heads, legs and wings are removed by worker bees to be reused on a new hunter. The food bulb is then stored in one of the queen's many larders.
Distinguishing a Piranha Bee queen from the inner structural stalk of the hive itself is difficult, although the large food intake orifice located near the top of the core is easy enough to identify. Essentially, the queen is the hive, and acts as a single mass production mechanism, constantly renewing every element it needs for survival. At some point the queen will begin to lose vigor and at this stage, queen bulbs (honey bulbs) filled with royal goo are produced. Workers attach legs, wings and special queenly heads, and drive them away to form new colonies. The hive then dies and rapidly decays into a leathery shoe-shaped husk. Piranha Bees usually live for up to ten years.