"A little rain is new, a thunder sting begins", tomorrow will usher in the sting of the twenty-four solar terms, insects will be active again, and before that, there are overseas media have reported that the world's largest wasp is the Japanese bumblebee, with a body length of up to 4.5 cm and wings spreading 7.6 cm.
However, at the foot of Mount Qingcheng in Chengdu, the wasp in the Huaxi Insect Museum far exceeds this "physique". In the museum, a wasp found in the area bordering Pu'er City and Myanmar in Yunnan Province has a body length of 6 centimeters and a wingspan of 9.35 centimeters, far exceeding the previous record for the world's largest wasp with a wingspan of 7.6 centimeters.
Individual Chinese tiger-headed wasps with a wingspan of up to 9.35 cm
Comparison of the super Chinese tiger head bee with the large individuals of the Sichuan-produced Chinese tiger head wasp
The king of the poisonous bees may refresh the bee world records
At the end of last year, the Chengdu Huaxi Entomological Museum found during an inspection of the China-Myanmar border area in Yunnan that there was a super large Chinese tiger head bee in the Pu'er area of Yunnan, and its worker bees generally had a wingspan of 8 cm, a body length of about 5 cm, and a large individual body length of more than 6 cm. Among the more than 5,000 species of wasps known in the world, this is the largest of the wasps. "The discovery of this super bumblebee was entirely by accident." Zhao Li, director of the Huaxi Insect Museum, said that in November 2018, when the expedition team was inspecting the Pu'er area of Yunnan Province, a local compatriot passed a photo from his mobile phone for him to see.
According to him, the picture shows a huge hive whose shell has been peeled off and placed on a bamboo shelf, and a young man is trying to wrap his arms around it. However, his arms were fully outstretched and he could only circle less than a third of the edge of the hive, which was supposed to be about two meters in diameter and larger than all known hive records. The hive inside the nest also looked very large, and Zhao Li judged at the time that it might belong to some kind of giant wasp.
Group photo in front of exploring the Wasp nest
According to the data, the Chinese Tiger Head Bee (Vespa mandarinia), often referred to as the Bumblebee or Wasp, is the largest vecaenidae species in the world. They mainly inhabit the temperate and subtropical regions of eastern and southern Asia, and have many names in different regions, the more formal names are the Japanese tiger head bee, the Taiwan tiger head bee, the golden ring wasp, etc., while the Western countries call it the Asian giant bee. This species is one of the world-famous poisonous bees, and as can be seen from the name, they all have a large yellow head, fierce as a tiger, and this is also true. This species is large and fierce, about the size of the species, Wikipedia and other sources record that its worker bee body is up to 4.5 cm long, the queen bee can reach 5-6 cm, and the wingspan is up to 7.6 cm, which is the largest vespa known in the world.
Explore the Vespa Nest To find the queen bee's trail
In search of this giant bee, the expedition visited many local beekeepers and led them to explore dozens of different wasp nests, but never found a species capable of making such a huge hive.
However, while rushing to a local farmers' market, Zhao Li saw his compatriots selling wasp nests that had just been picked and contained a large number of bee pupae and young bees. Among the four wasp nests displayed at the stalls, Zhao Li found some huge hive fragments estimated to be more than a meter in diameter, and inside them lived the particularly large-looking Chinese tiger-headed bee, the largest of which had wings spreading up to 9.35 centimeters.
By comparing the nest samples, he confirmed that the huge hive in the photo he had seen earlier was the masterpiece of the Chinese tiger-headed bee. Through the measurement and analysis of hundreds of specimens obtained, Zhao Li found that the Chinese tiger head bee obtained this time was much larger than that of individuals in any other part of the world, and that the body markings were different from the color and color of all known subspecies of the species, and it was likely to be a new subspecies. Zhao Li believes that the queen bee of this population should be larger, but unfortunately it cannot be found.
Why is the Chinese Tiger Bee so huge? Zhao Li speculated that the area was near the Tropic of Cancer, the winter was very short, the temperature was almost year-round suitable for the growth of the species, and the species could forage and grow longer than other distribution areas. This gives you the opportunity to develop a larger body size and reproduce a larger population, making a larger nest.
The Chinese tiger-headed bee has a large yellow head, as fierce as a tiger
Comparison of the Chinese tiger-headed wasp with other wasp species
Foraging ranges of up to several kilometers Venom is deadly enough
The Chinese tiger-headed bee has a broad head with huge "teeth" and is one of the most dangerous insects in Asia when it is injected with a large amount of venom when stinging a human.
Zhao Li introduced that the tiger head bee protein in its bee venom contains histamines, hemolysis and neurotoxoids, which can cause allergic reactions in the body, which in turn will cause human liver and kidney failure, causing blood pressure to drop shock, and endangering people's lives. Therefore, some doctors even recommend that people with allergies should first carry adrenocortical hormones and anti-allergic and anti-inflammatory drugs or steroids in the area where this kind of activity is active, and once they are attacked by it, they can be injected immediately to save their lives.
Medical records record that people who have been stung by this species more than 10 times need medical assistance, more than 30 times need first aid, and the average number of those who die has been stung 59 times. In Japan, about 30 to 40 people die each year from stings. In Shaanxi Province in 2013, they killed at least 28 people. In bees, they are also overlords, often attacking other types of hives, and killing other bees.
According to the data, they most like to find other species of wasp nests in the woods alone, and also like to hunt bees in and out of the honeycomb caves. Once they find a nest of bees, they expel, hunt and pupate them all back into the nest to feed their young bees. One species can kill 40 Western bees in a minute, and 30 species can destroy an entire hive containing 30,000 bees in just over three hours. But they are more difficult to attack the Chinese honey bee hive in China, and the Chinese bees will gather into a bee ball to surround them, violently vibrating their wings, so that the inside of the bee ball will produce a high temperature of up to 46 ° C, heating them to death. Due to the large size and flexibility of movement, their foraging range can reach several kilometers away from the hive, and tens to hundreds of meters around their nests, self-defined spheres of influence, as soon as they find animal activity, they will call on friends and immediately attack. Fortunately, outside of their sphere of influence, they generally do not sting people, and when they are attacked, they only fly in the air and look around to guard or flee. These giant wasps do not nest in trees like other wasps, but live in underground building nests. Because the tiger-headed bee pupae is delicious, as long as it is found, villagers in Yunnan and other places will dig up the hive at night to get the bee pupae, because the bees have poor vision at night and their attack ability is greatly weakened.
For the super-giant Chinese tiger-headed wasp found this time, Zhao Li said they will study it further in the hope of proving whether they are independent subspecies or species.
Red Star News reporter Eun Xiaohuai has a picture provided by chengdu Huaxi Insect Museum
Edited by Jing Lingyan