The hornet has landed: Scientists combat new honeybee killer in US........

[riversedge]

The hornet has landed: Scientists combat new honeybee killer in US
Researchers are working to limit the threat while developing better eradication methods.


https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/05/the-hornet-has-landed-scientists-combat-new-honeybee-killer-in-us/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us


Hannah Hoag, Knowable Magazine - 5/26/2024, 5:55 AM
2023 marked the first sighting of a yellow-legged hornet in the United States, sparking fears that it may spread and devastate honeybees as it has in parts of Europe.
Enlarge / 2023 marked the first sighting of a yellow-legged hornet in the United States, sparking fears that it may spread and devastate honeybees as it has in parts of Europe.
Miguel Riopa/AFP via Getty Images
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In early August 2023, a beekeeper near the port of Savannah, Georgia, noticed some odd activity around his hives. Something was hunting his honeybees. It was a flying insect bigger than a yellowjacket, mostly black with bright yellow legs. The creature would hover at the hive entrance, capture a honeybee in flight, and butcher it before darting off with the bee’s thorax, the meatiest bit.

“He’d only been keeping bees since March… but he knew enough to know that something wasn’t right with this thing,” says Lewis Bartlett, an evolutionary ecologist and honeybee expert at the University of Georgia, who helped to investigate. Bartlett had seen these honeybee hunters before, during his PhD studies in England a decade earlier. The dreaded yellow-legged hornet had arrived in North America.

With origins in Afghanistan, eastern China, and Indonesia, the yellow-legged hornet, Vespa velutina, has expanded during the last two decades into South Korea, Japan, and Europe. When the hornet invades new territory, it preys on honeybees, bumblebees, and other vulnerable insects. One yellow-legged hornet can kill up to dozens of honeybees in a single day. It can decimate colonies through intimidation by deterring honeybees from foraging. “They’re not to be messed with,” says honeybee researcher Gard Otis, professor emeritus at the University of Guelph in Canada.

The yellow-legged hornet is so destructive that it was the first insect to land on the European Union’s blacklist of invasive species. In Portugal, honey production in some regions of the country has slumped by more than 35 percent since the hornet’s arrival. French beekeepers have reported 30 percent to 80 percent of honeybee colonies exterminated in some locales, costing the French economy an estimated $33 million annually.............................

[dweller]

1. Yellow legged devil

Sting effects
…
What happens when you get stung by an asian giant hornet
“Usually, the stung part severely swells and continues aching for a few days,” Makino explains, via email. And “although you could also have these symptoms when stung by the other hornet species, the intensity is said to be much more severe in Vespa mandarinia.”


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[JustAnotherGen]

2. kick and rec

I love my curious bees that come around my wildflower patch and Asian Garden patch. Home they don't make it up to NJ

[AZ8theist]

3. This is a by-product of international trade.

Native species are getting wiped out due to infestation from the other parts of the planet.

Chinese carp are invading the Great Lakes. They've had to electrify the tributaries feeding into Lake Michigan to stem the invasion. Should they get through, the salmon population in the lakes will be destroyed. The carp are bony and not good for eating, so it's a losing situation.

Once the honeybees are wiped out, what happens to the plants that need them for pollination?

No more food for humans. Oh well, it was a good run while it lasted.

Sure, evolution will adapt the native species to cope with the changed environmental pressures.
Just we won't be around to witness it......