Posted on 05/28/2016 8:13:41 AM PDT by Smittie
Jihadi hornets!
Quick, grab the Raid!
I saw that show. Really nasty. There was a previous show with video of hornets attacking a bee nest; utter destruction.
These make Killer Bees look like Ladybugs! This is scary stuff.
Yes, the scream "Halal Snackbar" right before they sting you.
Bees can adapt. For example, the bees in Japan have adapted with a defensive technique where they surround the predatory Japanese hornets and toast them to death. Of course it’s a kamikaze maneuver but it’s effective to defend the hive. The European honeybees better learn fast!
Totally. It’d be an economic and ecological disaster to have the bees eradicated. As an invasive species, the hornets should be aggressively hunted down and destroyed.
Its Monster Week on Animal Planet.
As if Europe has enough problems, I can handle bees but Hornets are nasty and sting but then again my Alma Mater High School in Chesapeake, Va mascot is a hornet so I cannot hate them.
The Japanese Hornets we have here are huge and I hear that their sting is like getting hit with a nail gun, but they’re fortunately not known to be all that aggressive toward humans. Wasps, they eat them.
Two years ago I had two nests under the eaves of my house just above the back deck: one was hornets and the other was of bees. Neither bothered me except that the “guard” bees at the nest entrance always came forward to check me out. They seemed to say, “Oh, it’s you.” Then went back to their posts.
Occasionally I would witness one of the bees going over to the hornet’s nest (about 12’ away) and literally being thrown off the “property”. Neither side was hostile, and it was amusing to see.
They might compete with the two domestic hornets which are bigger but pergaps not as organized.
The domestic ones, I have seen them attack ciccadas twice their own size and hover over wasp nests, decapitating one by one each wasp flying away from the nest, resulting in a pile of cadavers below the wasp nest. They are the smartest insect I know.
Indeed, bees do not compete for meat with hornets and they probably help keep intruders out. I have seen hornets attack wasp nests.
We live in the middle of a forest. These hornets seem to eat wood, as I have witnessed them stripping wood off of fences. Or perhaps I have the two species, hornets and wasps, confused.
They’re not eating the wood, they’re chewing it up to make their nests. The wood’s still damaged just the same, but they don’t eat it.
Thanks for the info.
One of those things somehow got into my basement a few years ago. Terrifying.
The sting of an Asian hornet is powerful enough to kill a full-grown man.
One Japanese male victim survived an attack only by injecting himself with an adrenaline antidote.
I wouldn’t want to be near one.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.