"Murder hornets" invade America

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/05/02/murder-hornets-invade-amer.html

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I first saw Murder Hornets back in 1963 when they were called “Zanti Misfits”.
https://images.app.goo.gl/V8J9g1VPZkAK3Cii9

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Came here to say finally a legitimate reason to own a flamethrower, you beat me to it!

Holy S*#T those are F*#KING ENORMOUS!

Kill it with fire, now, now, NOW :flushed:

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There’s a good reason why beekeepers are so afraid of what these can do to their hives

Similar to what @RandomDude said for a strategy to deal with these things, japanese honey bees have been using a strategy against those hornets that would make Jigsaw proud.

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Anyone else getting a real Book of Revelation vibe in 2020?

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Apparently honey buzzards are the only natural predators for these guys. Time to import some of them next? That never goes wrong, right?

(Didn’t mean to direct the reply specifically to you, @GiantRobotPilot.)

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Ok- the Japanese bees in that are amazing.

I’m just now remembering- I’ve seen one of these giant so-called mountain hornets in Japan in a local museum somewhere on Honshu- I remember freaking out when I was told it was real and lived in the mountains, and people feared them.

Guys- these actually are this big- they are frightening in person even dead and tacked up. The stinger looked like a damn fishing hook size barb.

I never, never want to see one of these in person

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Well, they seem nice.

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They’re going to disappear one day. It’s like a miracle- they will disappear.

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bee

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antivirus or not, i’m never leaving the house again.

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A segment of the article, with no internal omissions:

"…Mr. Bérubé still managed to eliminate the nest and collect samples, but the next day, his legs were aching, as if he had the flu. Of the thousands of times he has been stung in his lifetime of work, he said, the Asian giant hornet stings were the most painful.

After collecting the hornet in the Blaine area, state officials took off part of a leg and shipped it to an expert in Japan." Dang.

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I wish! This :face_with_symbols_over_mouth: year. We couldn’t just have good old-fashioned locusts, right? That would’ve been too easy.

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When I was a kid I lived in Zambia where there were all manner of over-sized creatures ranging from cute and endearing to fucking terrifying.

As a young adult in at a dinner party in London, I got into conversation with a guy who had also lived in Zambia as a child. Like y’do, we got to telling giant scary creature stories.

His ultimate story involved a spider so big that none of the adults would go near it. So they called in a neighbour who dispatched the thing with a rifle.

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I think I just needed a good excuse to buy one:

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Time to start practicing my best impression of Serena Williams! :raising_hand_woman:t5:

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So the NYT article says that its unlikely the murder hornets (which is cool if its a band name, but terrifying if not) could have flown down from the colony in B.C. 10 miles away. That surprised me. 10 miles ain’t far for a hornet that size. So I checked wikipedia, which says they can fly 60 miles in a day. The source – a fucking NYT article from 2001.

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