[barry42001]

Over 2 inches long, capable of decimating a colony of european honeybees with but a handful of attackers, hope this is one import we NEVER get
[attachment=0:1fnbd2p8]mandarinia1.jpg[/attachment:1fnbd2p8]

European Honeybee colony being destroyed by a few dozen hornets
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... video.html

 

[Guest]

holy cow! how long is the stinger on that :shock:

 

[Dalantech]

Wow! Stunned that you'd let it sit on your hand!

 

[Charles]

That is absolutley huge!

 

[G3farms]

Is that real?? or photoshop. I have seen the hornets at work on the honey bees on youtube but they did not look that big.

G3

 

[barry42001]

unfortunately it's real, they exceed 2" in length and in all cases totally dwarf honeybees

 

[barry42001]

http://www.animalpicturesarchive.com/Ar ... 826244.jpg
when you see this thing again notice the size again fills the palm of the hand

 

[Iddee]

Even tho it's real, my guess is the photos were taken of a dead one.
Either that, or he's much braver than I.

 

[G3farms]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr9hoRFI ... xt_from=PL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_DQYVpp ... PL&index=2

and we thought that little beetle was a pest.

G3

 

[barry42001]

The first pic, the hornet is definately, was cleaning it's antenna at time of pic, probably was fed friut juice on hand to entice it not irritate it, done it before intentionally with both bald faced hornets, and not so intentionally with yellow jeckets pic 2 is definately dead.

 

[barry42001]

look at this monster masticating a PREYING MANTIS
The European Hornet is dinning on Honeybee
Bald faced Hornet masticating something

 

[BjornBee]

They actually pay kids to walk around beeyards in Japan and kill those giant hornets with tennis rackets. Now that is some overhead (no tennis pun intened) I do not want to pay..... :lol:

 

[Andrew Carson]

Somewhere not too long ago I saw an article showing the defensive actions of bees when attacked by these beasts. Essentially, they smother them with massive numbers. It was suggested that perhaps the mechanism was concentrated CO2, but at least they had a way of fighting back.

 

[BjornBee]

They kill the hornets by pure heat.

 

[barry42001]

Yeah, they " ball " them, and vibrate their wing muscles, generating up to 120 degrees heat, scarcley tolerable to the bees, but fatal to hornet. This defensive tactic works only for Japanese honeybees, and only if is the initial scout hornet, once the infantry arrives is too late for any honeybees to do much at all. European honeybees never had to develope this tactic as they were never exposed to this particular threat. Interestingly enough--is same thing bees do to kill their queen who is failing, ( after ensuring that several queen cells are close to hatching.)

 

[XLB]

i bet it would look cool to shoot one with a paintball gun. :hunter:

 

[barry42001]

atleast until she got back up :shock: :twisted: and started to look for the shooter :beg:

 

[Mama Beek]

rat shot XLB, rat shot. These ain't the kind of critters to play with!

 

[Bens-Bees]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr9hoRFIyuc&feature=PlayList&p=C39B1790B65EC6F8&index=4&playnext=3&playnext_from=PL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_DQYVpp ... PL&index=2

and we thought that little beetle was a pest.

G3

I don't know for sure, but their size may give us a solution if they ever show up here. By placing a screen (maybe 1/4 inch hardware cloth) over the entrance that the bees can go through easily, but the hornets can not. Combine that with a few yellow-jacket like traps baited with fish instead of juice to make sure the honey bees ignore it, and I don't think they'd be too much of a problem.

A couple years ago I had a wasp the size of my hand (easily 4 or 5 inch wingspan) come flying in the window of my car as I was driving down the interstate. Needless to say I pulled over and jumped out screaming like a school girl at this monster, later I looked it up and found that it didn't even have a stinger; it was the male of the Velvet ant wasp.

 

[barry42001]

Cicada Killers are really quite large and will readily make a believer out of you if you enter thier turf--sorta chasing you out. :chased: While the hardware cloth would prevent the hornets from entering the colony--and thats a good thing, nothing prevents them from severely depleting the colony strength from the entrance wiping out anything that responds to them.

[attachment=0:1n7mi8vy]cickil.jpg[/attachment:1n7mi8vy]