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Watch A Hornet Be Cooked Alive By Bees

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KynloStephen66515:


A single Japanese giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia japonica) can kill forty honeybees a minute. A small group of them can decimate an entire bee colony. The hornet’s scissor-like teeth can wreak havoc on their prey so swiftly that Japanese honeybees had to adapt to survive.

Instead of stinging the intruder, the honeybees swarm the hornet and begin vibrating, raising their collective temperature to 117 degrees Fahrenheit (47.2 ºC) and turning their crush of bodies into somewhat of a convection oven. While the honeybees can tolerate temperatures of 118 degrees Fahrenheit (47.8 ºC), Japanese giant hornets can only tolerate 115 degrees (46.1 ºC).

Watch the honeybees save their colony in a three minute video below.



Source: http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/hornet-cooked-alive-bees

tomos:
That video needs a strobe-light warning :tellme:

Incredibly impressive how species evolve to figure out stuff like this...

superboyac:
those japanese hornets are impressive creatures.  theyre like the t-rex's of the flying/stinging insects.  a handful of them will decimate entire bee hives.  like sending a few tanks into Tienanmen square.

superboyac:
yikes!
Thirty to forty people die in Japan every year after having been stung, which makes the Japanese giant hornet the second most lethal animal in Japan after humans (bears kill zero to five people and venomous snakes kill five to ten people each year).
--- End quote ---

tomos:
I had a (european) hornet nest above the front door two years in a row (two different locations).
They got indoors occasionally, but I didnt have a problem with them (mind you @ ~30mm, they are pretty scary and do get the adrenalin flowing).
Apparently, unlike the Japanese variety, their sting is not very dangerous - thankfully...

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