THE DIABOLICAL EXOTHERMIC STRATEGY OF THE JAPANESE HONEYBEE

Yasunori Koide, CC BY-SA 4.0
<https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

The giant Asian hornet (pictured above) is not a friend of the honeybee, and its appearance at a beehive is not greeted by the hive's occupants with approbation, especially in light of the fact that a few hornets can eliminate an entire colony of 10,000 bees in a matter of hours while seizing the bee larvae as food for the hornet children. The gargantuan size of the hornet and the thickness of its exoskeleton protect the hornet from the stings of the bees, and each hornet can sting repeatedly while a bee can only sting once before it dies. The resulting slaughter from a giant Asian hornet invasion dwarfs even the acrimonious interaction between the competing houses in Game of Thrones.

However, not all bees meekly go to their demise in the presence of these monsters. Japanese honeybees (Apis cerana japonica) eschew futile stinging and lay a trap instead. They gather around the entrance of the hive and allow a hornet to enter. They then block the entrance, cluster together, and form a ball of bees with the hornet at its center. The bees thereafter exercise briskly by buzzing their wings for twenty minutes. The resulting body heat from the bees cooks the hornet to death.

Although giant Asian hornets feed on insects, they certainly will attack humans. Their venom is powerful and can result in death, especially in the case of multiple stings, even if the victim is not allergic to the toxin.

This ill-tempered insect has been relatively recently discovered in the state of Washington and in British Columbia, much to the chagrin of apiarists and also of those folks who wish to avoid being subjected to numerous painful and potentially lethal stings.