Recently, residents of washington state in the United States have found an "Asian killer bumblebee", and the state's agricultural department has begun to implement an emergency encirclement and suppression program. What is the origin of this bumblebee, and how can it make americans panic so much? It turned out that it was not native to the United States, it was an invasive species, and its origin was in East Asia, where China is located. Since 2019, this murderous bumblebee has appeared in Washington State many times, and its power is indeed enough to make Americans sweat.
Tough "Killer Bumblebee"
Bumblebee in our country is generally known as wasps or wasps, and industrious honey bees are different, wasps attack is extremely strong, if which community to fly a wasp, can make residents a bout of uneasiness, horse bees sting dead people also occur from time to time. And what americans call this "Asian killer bumblebee" (sounds hollywood-like), the scientific name should be called the golden ring wasp, is the largest of the wasp family, and the lethality is even more explosive.
Golden ring wasp, also known as the great tiger head bee, has a number of subspecies, in China's distribution is extremely wide, in addition to Xinjiang Tibet and other western regions, from the northeast all the way to Sichuan Yunnan have distribution, in Korea, Japan is also very common. This vespa is characterized by its largeness! The female bee is about 48 to 50 mm long, the male is about 39 to 43 mm long, and the worker bee is about 38 to 45 mm long, which is a stand out from the ordinary bees.
The Golden Ring Wasp is huge
The golden-ringed wasp has a yellow head and a well-developed mouth like a sickle, which looks very fierce, while the sting needle on the tail is 0.6 cm long and can pierce ordinary beekeeping suits. Its flight speed is also very fast, reaching 32 kilometers per hour. With these abilities, the Golden Ring Wasp is large enough to kill in the insect world, preying on small insects and larvae, as well as eating plant sap, nectar and fruit. Its hives are oval in shape, usually hidden in the ground, in tree cavities or stone crevices, but also under hidden bushes or eaves, and can reach a diameter of 25 to 120 cm.
The most significant harm of this bumblebee is that it will kill bees, they like to hunt in and out of the bees near the other beehive, due to their strong fighting power, a single bee will be easily slaughtered when it encounters a golden ring wasp, and the wasp will cut off the bee's head or limbs. What is even more cruel is that when a golden-ringed wasp finds a honeybee nest, it will leave a mark with pheromones, and many will come within an hour or two, and even come out of the nest within half a day. When there are large numbers of wasps, the bees, although they resist in groups, are still difficult to defend.
The golden-ringed wasp kills the bees
When the Golden Ring Wasp invades the hive, the entire bee family will be destroyed. It has been observed that 30 golden-ringed wasps can kill up to 30,000 bees in 2 hours, not only that, they will occupy the hive for several days, snatch away honey, eat bee larvae and pupae and even take away food as their own larvae, resulting in a massacre.
In addition to the economic losses caused to the beekeeping industry, the Golden Ring Wasp sting is also very powerful, its venom is comparable to some venomous snakes, if the allergy will be more serious, if it is stung by dozens of vespas at the same time, there is a risk of death, and its "killing hornet" name is derived from this. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, bumblebees, wasps and bees kill an average of 62 people in the United States each year, and the situation would be worse if the more powerful Golden Ring Wasps also appeared in large numbers.
It is precisely because of the harm of bees and people by the "Asian killer bumblebee" that the people in the US agricultural sector are panicked. How this wasp reached the United States is unknown, but the Americans have become a great enemy, and they have hung bottles of orange juice or jam as bait in the trees along the possible flight route of the bumblebee as a trap to trap them. When the live animals are caught, they will be equipped with a wireless transmitter so that they can track and find the hive and then annihilate them.
The United States prevents killer hornets
In November 2020, the United States destroyed the first killer bumble hive, finding 500 living specimens, including nearly 200 queen bees. The queen of the golden ring wasp has a lifespan of only about 1 year, and at the turn of summer and autumn, the fertilized eggs laid by the old queen in the summer and autumn will develop into new bees (unfertilized eggs develop into males only for reproduction), and if undiscovered, each of these new queens is likely to establish a new wasp kingdom in the following year.
However, this kind of "terrorist killer" who is so valued by the United States is treated very differently in China. Wouldn't the murderous bumblebee be harmful in our country? That's not true, the golden ring vee is also deeply hated by beekeepers in China, but China's native bees (middle bees) have long co-evolved with wasps, and their combat effectiveness is much higher than that of the American bees (imported from Italy), and the most critical thing is the use of "strategy".
The head of the golden-ringed wasp
When the bee finds the first wasp, it will immediately make the right response: first rush up and kill the first wasp at all costs. There is an opinion on the Internet that Chinese and Japanese bees will surround the wasps with their bodies and rub them, and use the heat generated to "heat up" the wasps. Whether this statement is true or not remains to be examined, but the chinese bee can indeed defeat the golden-ringed wasp that comes to reconnoiter with more fighting and less, of course, its own casualties are also very large. After killing the enemy, the bee will also bury the marks made by the wasps with propolis dirt to prevent the nest from being found by other wasps.
Although the bee has various strategies, it will still suffer a lot of losses when encountering the golden ring wasp. The foreign bees imported from Italy, although they are large, but after encountering the golden ring vespa, they have no courage and will only fight with it, and if the swarm of vespas arrives, only the slaughtered part remains.
In addition to the resistance of east Asian bees, the golden ring wasp will also be damaged by some natural enemies in the place of origin, such as hummingbirds, spiders will prey on wasps, some microorganisms will also cause damage to it, and an insect called the yellow-tailed nest borer will lay eggs on the wasp nest, its larvae will travel through the hive, feeding on the wasp larvae, and will also cause the hive to disintegrate, which is really a thing and a thing.
The hummingbird is a natural enemy of wasps
Since the golden ring wasp has done so much harm to the beekeeping industry, why doesn't our country eliminate it? It turns out that things have two sides, and it is of great use while being harmful. For example, wasps are highly effective and can control forest and farmland pests. The wasp pupae and larvae belong to high protein, low fat, contain a variety of nutrients, including vitamins, trace elements, etc., the taste is said to be similar to shrimp meat, can be fried can be steamed, pretzel salt can be spicy, is a kind of food and nutrition, in the food of our country occupies a place.
The venom of the wasp also has a relatively large medicinal value, the highly purified bee venom is high, up to thousands of yuan per gram, and the unpurified original poison is also hundreds of dollars a gram, which is of great economic value. Many people directly use the adult worms of the golden ring wasp to brew pharmaceutical wine, and the price of adult worms per pound (about 200) can be sold for about 150 to 200 yuan, which is not cheap. Because the artificial culture of the golden ring vespa is less mature and smaller, so that a large number of wild hives have been dug up and are in danger in many places.
Breeding of wasps
This is the peculiarity of species invasion, which is more common in the place of origin, and even used as food, and becomes a terrifying "Asian killer hornet" in the United States, which is also common in the cases of invasions of other species, because there are no natural enemies there and there is a possibility of wanton flooding.