The Biology, Agriculture, and Paleontology thread

Bees are fine, native wasps and hornets are fine; just leave them be.

These fuckers, however, shouldn't be outside of their native range. They will melt your flesh.

These things can also sting through beekeeper suits so you'd need full body armor and maybe a flamethrower if you want to take on a nest.

From a WSU news post on April 6th:

Edited by AngrokVa on May 3rd 2020 at 9:33:52 AM

Wait, the murder hornets are in the USA now?

Shit.

They've been sighted in the Northwest and people there are worried that they'd thrive in the humid forests.

Why is it that when the news starts widely reporting an issue, it gets worse?

I ask this 'cuz I get the feeling it'll somehow get worse.

Edited by AngrokVa on May 3rd 2020 at 12:31:02 PM

I wonder how well they'd handle wildfire season?

By murdering firemen.

(Reposting from the covid thread.)

If you thought 2020 could not be any worse... murder hornets are coming to the US.

Yes, murder hornets. That is the nickname of the Asian giant hornet. It rates 4+ on the Schmidt sting pain index, making it Readings Are Off the Scale painful. 4 is "pure, intense, brilliant pain...like walking over flaming charcoal with a three-inch nail embedded in your heel." At that point, you'd probably rather be stabbed with a knife.

Oh yes, and multiple stings are deadly, and they love murdering normal bees... by ripping their heads off. And their sting can penetrate regular beekeeper's suits.

So yeah, watch out for these fuckers.

Edited by Redmess on May 5th 2020 at 4:07:31 PM

Sorry for not mentioning this earlier, but we actually started mentioning murder hornets on the previous page (the one I linked to back at the Covid thread). But it's fine, your post puts together a good chunk of what we were talking about.

I guess one "good" things about these hornets compared to other invasive insects is that they're so big and so aggressive that it should be somewhat easier to find their nests.

Sorry, I came in from another thread.

The big danger is not to humans, though, but to bees, and through them, to the food supply. If these things become a plague, it could be a huge problem.

Japanese honey bees are pretty well-adapted to defend themselves from hornets through swarming tactics. European ones are borked, though - the reason Japanese honey farmers are wary of cultivating them is that a single hornet attack can utterly ruin an entire hive.

"Swarming tactics" is a bit of an understatement. "Envelop the intruder in a ball of bees and gass & cook it" is just as accurate a descriptor.

Nest size is not quite correlated with size: Vespa velutina builds nests quite a tad larger than those of our native Vespa crabro (chill AF hornet, would recomend), despite the later being larger. velutina coevolved alongside mandarinia, and thus can thrive alongside crabro, which is smaller and far more docile than mandarinia, which tends to eat velutina as well.

Kill queens, dispose of nests.

I hear that Giant Hornets make a tasty snack.

There's a New York Times article that talks about that. (Warning: it's behind a paywall because it's not covid-related.)

Edited by AngrokVa on May 5th 2020 at 4:03:36 AM

... While Asian giant hornets are not new to me, someone please explain to me why this species is allowed to live in the first place. Even the Japanese honey bees don't stand a chance if they don't manage to kill off the lone scouts before they alert the rest of their nestmates to the bees' hive; an entire swarm of the hornets, while still numerically inferior to the bees, is still numerous enough that their physical superiority will allow enough of them to survive the bees' defense and slaughter the hive.

Seriously, what is the case for not systematically driving these hornets to extinction globally, including their homeland of Japan?

Edited by MarqFJA on May 5th 2020 at 7:42:24 PM

The same reason why we don't drive mosquitoes into extinction. As much as we really want to, there might be drastic and unintended consequences to the general ecosystem.

By the way, you seem to be in a pretty bad mood lately. I suggest taking some time off.

Edited by TheWildWestPyro on May 5th 2020 at 9:46:10 AM

An excellent philosophical point... that won't matter at all in the scenario where all non-Japanese honey bees, along with several other species, have been driven to extinction around the world due to Asian giant hornet invasions. At the very least, there should be stringent measures in place against accidental exporting of the species on all air and sea shipping whose last stop had been at a Japanese port.

And the current situation both globally and domestically sadly makes your advice worthless. Taking time off will almost certainly not help me with all the stress that I'm getting from living under a totalitarian authoritarian regime, the pandemic threat, the increasing escalation of astounding human stupidity and malice, arguing with assholes and self-righteous know-it-alls, and several other things that are going on in my life.

Edited by MarqFJA on May 5th 2020 at 8:00:19 PM

Yeah, Marq, driving naturally-occurring species to extinction is both unethical and physically bad for their native ecosystems. Which is why we try to avoid siccing invasive species on them.

In Western Australia, we'd normally have widespread trapping efforts to cull invasive European wasps around this time of year. Not sure how the pandemic situation is affecting it at the moment, though.

Scary as the Japanese Hornet is, it has a place...in Japan.

Kill It with Fire in the rest of the world, sure.

Killer bees otoh I'd argue are unnatural abominations that need to be wiped out. They're literally unnatural — they're the result of some idiot hybridizing bees.

Edited by M84 on May 6th 2020 at 2:17:12 AM

Yeah, you can't just start killing off species just because they don't benefit humanity. That is hugely unethical and goes against the whole idea of ecological preservation.

Of course we can make exceptions for certain human specific parasites. Like that worm that likes to burrow in human flesh. That's just too evil.

Edited by Redmess on May 6th 2020 at 11:44:45 AM

TBF, killing off the Japanese Hornet would also benefit the Japanese honeybees. They presumably don't enjoy being eaten by murder hornets.

A bit more prosaically, but it's going to be quite difficult to exterminate the Asian hornets w/o getting other hornets caught in the crossfire. Also, not all honeybees are under threat from them - as stated above Asian bees can successfully defend their nests.