Monday 1 July 2013

Nature against nature: Samurai honey bees Vs monster Hornets

Every-one's a little unsure of bees - they sting and, lets face it, however nice their honey is that's always gonna set the little voices in peoples heads to shrieking 'squash it, squash it, squash it!' 

But a bees life is no bath of honey - besides bee-ing (sorry) a drone-worker totally under the control of the hive, in japan the bees have to put up with assaults from these monsters:



Those are Japanese giant hornets, and one on one no bee stands a chance against this armoured monster. They rip the bees apart and eat their wing muscles, and they eat the larva alive.

And not only are the damn things ten times the size of a bee, they spray acidic venom.

They're so bad that they kill forty people a year in Japan.

To make it worse, they're smart, and they're team players: No hornet will try and tackle a hive on it's own - it lays down a pheromone that the other hornets home in on.

So Japanese honey bees have learned their enemies weaknesses - see the hornet will die if its body temperature gets over 47 degrees Celsius. So the bees have come up with a cunning plan, and the fight is on......

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