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Bug United States Science

First 'Murder Hornet' Nest In US Is Found In Washington State (npr.org) 120

Posted by BeauHD from the be-afraid-be-very-afraid dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Remember the "murder hornets"? You know, the terrifyingly large Asian giant hornets that are threatening to wipe out the North American bee population? Entomologists with the Washington State Department of Agriculture have now located a nest of them -- the first to be found in the U.S., the agency says. The nest was discovered in the cavity of a tree on a property in the city of Blaine, near the Canadian border.

This achievement closely follows another advance: State entomologists had recently had luck trapping the hornets. This week, they were able to collect four live Asian giant hornets using a new type of trap -- and managed to attach radio trackers to three of them. One of those tagged hornets led staffers to the nest. The plan now? Destroy the nest. The agency says it intends to eradicate it on Saturday, removing the tree if necessary. Asian giant hornets are an invasive pest that prey on honeybees and other insects. "Only a couple of hornets can slaughter an entire healthy honeybee hive in just a matter of a few hours," Sven-Erik Spichiger, chief entomologist for the state's agriculture department, told NPR last week.
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First 'Murder Hornet' Nest In US Is Found In Washington State More

First 'Murder Hornet' Nest In US Is Found In Washington State

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  • Yumm. Good Eats! (Score:4, Informative)

    by eatvegetables ( 914186 ) on Friday October 23, 2020 @11:26PM (#60642596)

    I hope you all will forgive me for pilfering a few facts from Wikipedia. Just wanted to being another perspective to this story.

    "In some Japanese mountain villages, the nests are excavated and the larvae are considered a delicacy when fried. In the central ChÅbu region, these wasps are sometimes eaten as snacks or an ingredient in drinks."

    Damn if that don't sound like good eattin'! Gotta find me a rotten ol' tree filled to the brim with a nest of juicy murder hornets, grab me some Tabasco sauce, lots and lots of tequila, and my cast iron bug-fryin' skillet. Bam! Instant party.

    • Most of North Africa eats locusts. Insects are edible. Our progenitors used to eat them all the time.

      • Yeah, it's just that most insects are mostly chitin shells and insides that taste like mud or green plant parts.

        Though I figure, insects that eat mostly flower juices and honey all day, might be pretty nice.
        Or, actually, wasps love to snack on raw ham as long as they still feed their young. Leave some out in the open, see little bite marks appear. ... Bacon-filled crispy-fried wasps, seasoned with rosemary and thyme, sold in a bag like chips ... Now there's a snack to advertise insect eating with!

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cusco ( 717999 )

          You must not be cooking them right. Huaytampo, a caterpillar in chrysalis stage, is toasted and eaten with fried cancha corn in the Andes and is absolutely delicious.

          We've had yellow jackets eat off our plates while we're having lunch out on the patio. It's interesting to watch them saw off a chunk of chicken and fly off with it, you just need to look at every bite before you put it in your mouth. You really **don't** want to have one of those bastards sting the inside of your mouth.

      • Maybe itâ(TM)s like eating little itty bitty crabs, or meaty pistachios.

        Some folks around here seem to like eating cicadas.

        Guess if I was hungry enough..,

  • Can we please stop using this name? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Friday October 23, 2020 @11:33PM (#60642612) Homepage

    We used to have "killer bees" which actually did kill about 1,000 people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] I guess now with some new scary bug, we have to come up with an even scarier nickname. How about just "Asian giant hornet," which is what they are actually called? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • Honey Bees are also an invasive species (Score:5, Interesting)

    by plazman30 ( 531348 ) on Friday October 23, 2020 @11:35PM (#60642614) Homepage
    The European Honey Bee is also an invasive species in the US. It is not native to North America, and it out-competes native pollinators here, such as bumble bees and tons of solitary bee species. Always boggles my mind that invasive species we find useful, such as the honeybee, are OK to have around.

    • Re:Honey Bees are also an invasive species (Score:5, Informative)

      by Moridineas ( 213502 ) on Friday October 23, 2020 @11:45PM (#60642628) Journal

      I was a hobbyist beekeeper for a few years, and nobody in the local beekeeping group liked when I made that same point! There's lots of "save the bees!" messaging, and to be fair, I think it's a good message--the thing that kills honeybees also kills other good insects. But, you're absolutely right that honeybees are an invasive species in the new world.

      Honeybees actually spread across North America faster than European settlers did, making it as far as the Rockies on their own. I'm not aware of any evidence or studies that they outcompeted local pollinators, though it's certainly possible.

      There are many New World plants that honeybees cannot (or don't) pollinate. Tomatoes and squash are two prime examples--flowers are too deep for squash, and bumble bees are highly adapted to pollinating tomatoes.

      • Tomatoes and squash are two prime examples--flowers are too deep for squash, and bumble bees are highly adapted to pollinating tomatoes.

        Most tomato flowers self-pollinate due to wind action. In commercial greenhouses they get the same effect by various mechanical means.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Kaenneth ( 82978 )

          [insert fleshlight joke]

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by 1s44c ( 552956 )

          Tomatoes and squash are two prime examples--flowers are too deep for squash, and bumble bees are highly adapted to pollinating tomatoes.

          Most tomato flowers self-pollinate due to wind action. In commercial greenhouses they get the same effect by various mechanical means.

          They use bees for pollinating tomatoes in greenhouses, I've seen it. They buy the bees from the Netherlands, they come in a box. It's apparently less trouble than maintaining a bee hive.

        • There's also a lot more.pollinatinf species than just bees.

      • bumble bees are highly adapted to pollinating tomatoes.

        Even then, tomato flowers don't produce nectar and are only moderately interesting as a food source for bumblebees. Commercially produced bumblebee colonies for tomato growers come with their own sugar water supply to supplement the proteins from pollen. Bumblebees don't communicate like honeybees, so even if one bumblebee from the colony finds a better foraging location, it doesn't stop the other ones from visiting tomato plants. If they did, they would all fly to other flowering crops that are being grown

      • > and it out-competes native pollinators here, such as bumble bees and tons of solitary bee species

        Every time I'm out in my meadow I see new solitary bees, bumble bees, and on occasion a few honey bees.

        The Europeans seem to prefer the show flowers and the native bees the native plants. Bumble bees dominant the flowering shrubs (e.g.
        https://youtu.be/oh4GU3f2kaI [youtu.be] - feel fee to download max res with youtube-dl.)

        The Europeans are perhaps 2% of the bees I see. The meadow is surrounded by forest on three side

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by antdude ( 79039 )

        Humans are insasive too. :P

    • It sounds like you want to either accept Murder Hornets or exterminate Honey Bees, but it's not clear which.
    • I'm curious: why does it boggle your mind that honeybees are OK to have around? They're docile, only sting when provoked, and enable the US to be the Saudi Arabia of food. I'm really looking forward to see what's in your mind that makes you astounded.

    • The European Honey Bee is also an invasive species in the US. It is not native to North America, [...]

      So are humans.

      • Your argument falls flat because you falsely assume most of life on this planet would not prefer for humans to be eradicated too.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mark-t ( 151149 )
          Your argument also fails because it is predicated on the wholly unproven allegation that most life on the planet might happen to not actively prefer something is somehow a reflection that such life must actually have a preference for that thing, and that such preference is necessarily in such life's long term interest.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mark-t ( 151149 )
            blarghj... I can't think in the morning. What I had *meant* to type was:

            ... to not actively prefer the absence of something is somehow a reflection that such life must actually have a preference for that thing...

    • Technically, so are cattle. (With help from humans of course.)

    • They out-compete native wild bees in Europe too! Which is an euphemism for "starves them all to death by eating all their food".
      Honey bees are as special-bred unnatural livestock as our cows or pigs. At least the usual kind every kid knows.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Do we get video of the nest destruction tomorrow? How do you kill a bunch of evil flying objects that live in a tree? Say what you want about the name (which is a rather humorous thread) they do kill bees and we need bees right now... So back to killing them? Raid? Napalm? Sarin Gas? What's their poison?

    • How do you kill a bunch of evil flying objects that live in a tree?

      Poison depends on temperatures. Under 30C ambient - permetrines (same as in household insecticides). Above - organophosphorous sh*t.

    • I think I heard that they are going to plug the entrance/exit and vacuum out the hive.
  • Friendly reminder: The only "murder hornet" on this planet is a two-legged mammal.

  • Somehow the article forgets to mention that honeybees are not native to the Americas either and have been introduced...

  • tracking a hornet (Score:5, Interesting)

    by v1 ( 525388 ) on Saturday October 24, 2020 @01:36AM (#60642734) Homepage Journal

    That's gotta be one big, strong insect to be able to attach a radio transmitter to it... I am impressed!

    In centuries past, and still in a few places in the world, the natives would catch a honey bee and tie a small feather to it, and follow it back to its nest to get some honey. The feather was light enough for the bee to (with difficulty) fly back to the nest, but large and colorful enough to follow. (I suppose slowing down the bee helped with the following too)

  • But 'your' the ones doing the murdering... wiping out the hive.

  • yet another invasive species that hops in on cargo containers.

    it's amazing exactly how incredibly "not free" trade is , but we keep pretending it is .

    here's another example

    https://www.sciencemag.org/new... [sciencemag.org]

    could this be avoided ? of course it could. but egads you would have to pay 10% more for the cheap plastic crap you throw away in 2 years anyway. and that's communism, or socialism, or something that's worse than having our ecosystem wrecked by invasive species.

    and it's not just asia, there are plenty comi

    • The human race is a invasive destructive species.

      • Frankly, if anything, Covid-19 is an attempt by nature, to develop a vaccine against the planetary pathogen Homo 'sapiens' (self-titled).

        Given our current outlook, it's probably the only thing slowing down the apoalypse that is our actions.

        And we coulda just have made fewer babies. But noooo. Human life is soooo sacret!
        Fuck that, I'm not making any babies, and I'm gonna live fast and die early!
        Long life sucks. INTENSE life is where it's at!
        I'm gonna ne bold and frank, and declare: If you haven't killed your

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      This has been going on for a very long time. When humans introduced dogs to Australia 6000-8000 years ago several species almost immediately disappeared.

  • Nothing wipes out wild bee populations, like a bunch of highly bred unnaturally large "insect cattle" eating ALL the food in the area, leaving nothing for wild bees or other pollinators.

    But beekeepers keep nice and quiet about that, and act like they are the saviors of bees.

    Also, is this article scaremongering clichbait or scaremongering clickbait?
    Hornets have always liked to snack on all their smaller cousins.

  • Surprised nobody posted this yet:

    https://theoatmeal.com/comics/... [theoatmeal.com]

    All we need to do is attach mini flamethrowers to the bees and problem solved!!

  • It's the only way to be sure.

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