JGeropoulas
The Living Force
This story appeared in Popular Science (November, 2006). Honey bees are vanishing and hornets are building nests the size of cars!
Hornet Nest Horror
- Thread starter JGeropoulas
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allenb
The Force is Strong With This One
Yikes! First off, that is a really scary looking hornet's nest.
Interesting point you make about honey bees vanishing and hornets on the increase. Out of curiosity, I looked up what some consider bees and hornets to represent. What I found seemed to speak volumes about the state of our planet right now.
Bees: cooperation, shared wealth
Hornets: envy, jealousy
Can't speak for the veracity of the symbology, but it does seem appropriate.
Interesting point you make about honey bees vanishing and hornets on the increase. Out of curiosity, I looked up what some consider bees and hornets to represent. What I found seemed to speak volumes about the state of our planet right now.
Bees: cooperation, shared wealth
Hornets: envy, jealousy
Can't speak for the veracity of the symbology, but it does seem appropriate.
JGeropoulas
The Living Force
Well, it is especially fitting in view of a program I saw which showed a video shot of how honey bees responded to a hornet intruding into their hive. What you see in the video is a huge, ferocious-looking hornet making his way into an area massed with tiny, vulnerable-looking honey bees. (To get the visual impact, imagine the hornet's size comparable to a ping-pong ball and the honey bees the size of a pea.).allenb said:
But, then what you see is the honey bees assembling all around the hornet--but without ever directly touching it. Next, honey bees proceed to accelerate their wing movements until the hornet falls over dead! Their strategy: their unified wing flapping raises the temperature up beyond the endurance of the hornet, which kills him.
The narrator then comments, "So it ends up that the hornet doesn't steal their honey, but instead, the honey bees will be having roast hornet for dinner."
Sounds like the honey bees' cooperation not only produced honey, but also protected it from the envious hornet's attempted robbery.
Maybe we should expand that lecture on "the birds and bees" to cover more than just "sex" ;)
Rockimedes
The Force is Strong With This One
Sometimes cooperation does not work for the bees unfortunately. Check out this clip, 30 hornets destroy an entire colony of honeybees in minutes:
_http://youtube.com/watch?v=g2ZXTUcFYjI The bees may stand a chance against a single intruder, but against a group of them they seem utterly defenseless. Look how easily the hornets cut off the poor bees heads!
Do you happen to know the name of the program you were reffering to JGeropoulas? I love bees and would enjoy watching it.
_http://youtube.com/watch?v=g2ZXTUcFYjI The bees may stand a chance against a single intruder, but against a group of them they seem utterly defenseless. Look how easily the hornets cut off the poor bees heads!
Do you happen to know the name of the program you were reffering to JGeropoulas? I love bees and would enjoy watching it.
highmystica
Jedi Master
Wow scary!
Incidently JGeropoulas and Rockimedes, the only species of honey bee that behaves like that in defence of their nest that I know of is the asian honey bee when facing the asian giant hornet. The european honey bees that have been imported to japan (because they produce more honey) are easy pickins for the giant hornet. The asian honey bees however don't even have that much trouble with a raiding party of these hornets. The giant hornet is huge terribly agressive and just all around nasty - africanized honey bees have nothing on them aside from being more tolerant of heat ...
Also, if your curious Rockimedes, I couldn't find any movies online about either species, though I didn't spend that much time at it (sorry, got other stuff to do), I did however find it on wikipedia ... and we all know how terrible that site is, still here's the links ...
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_giant_hornet
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apis_cerana
Incidently JGeropoulas and Rockimedes, the only species of honey bee that behaves like that in defence of their nest that I know of is the asian honey bee when facing the asian giant hornet. The european honey bees that have been imported to japan (because they produce more honey) are easy pickins for the giant hornet. The asian honey bees however don't even have that much trouble with a raiding party of these hornets. The giant hornet is huge terribly agressive and just all around nasty - africanized honey bees have nothing on them aside from being more tolerant of heat ...
Also, if your curious Rockimedes, I couldn't find any movies online about either species, though I didn't spend that much time at it (sorry, got other stuff to do), I did however find it on wikipedia ... and we all know how terrible that site is, still here's the links ...
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_giant_hornet
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apis_cerana
JGeropoulas
The Living Force
I don't subscribe to cable, so it must've been on a Discover channel/program I watched at my daughter's around April 15, 2007.Rockimedes said:
