True story, we were trying to stay cool down by the river several years ago, and my kid goes into the water and gets stung by a drowning bee. He was just screaming out loud: oh the horror! But apparently the stinger had become detached from the bee and was still pulsating there in the water, and the kid brushed against it and got stung by the same damned bee stinger TWICE.
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(I forgot to add this–sorry!)
There’s a few times in the video where the exterminator points out The Queen to the camera. The queen bee/wasp/etc. is always larger and looks really different than soldiers and workers.
You have to get rid of that queen.
Wasps etc. will keep returning to protect her until she is destroyed.
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They’re here alright.
Several of our hives are extremely feisty and hard to work with. We only check on how they’re doing if it’s absolutely necessary (like to see if they’re dead or if the hive’s full). Smoking will not pacify them. Nothing seems to pacify them, come to think of it.
A few months ago we got a “cutout” call about a hive found in hollow of a tree in Austin. The goal when going out on a call like this would be (ideally) to cut the combs out of the hollow, make sure you have the queen in the combs, put everything into a bunch of frames/hives (we use Langstroth), load it all in the pickup, throw a big bedsheet over everything, tie it closed, and drive them really far away from their home base (despite what we know about bees, we aim for at least 10 miles). It was a tough cutout too, because he had to work as fast as possible in the densely populated center of the city.
My husband’s black suede shoes came back covered, studded with light brown stingers. So many it looked like he was wearing two hedgehogs on this feet. Nightmare fuel. I kinda squicked. Those Africanized bees were super duper angry!
I am told that they do make more honey, the ostensible reason why they were imported to our side of the world. I am still undecided how worthwhile that was. The European honeybee (Apis mellifera ) is docile but also an import.
North America has a lot of native pollinators that are being displaced, killed by the same thing felling honeybees (various pesticides) and of course gigantic depletion of habitat. These keystone insects need support even if harvesting their honey is not ever feasible:
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Thank you for that, it led to some fascinating research on Oriental hornets! Now I have new cocktail party conversation (just in time for the yearly intersectional meeting of scientists and absurdly rich people I attend).
@TokyoSpark, the giant Japanese “yak killer” hornets are very venomous, and reportedly not quite as calm and gentle as most hornets, but they are nothing like yellowjackets, believe me. They certainly are a terrible pest of honeybees, though, only the Japanese honeybee is known to deal with them effectively.
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Any time. I didn’t want to spout off facts that i vaguely remembered but from what i recalled it was theorized that the hornets were using some sort of quantum mechanism to gain power from sunlight. I could be mistaken and can’t be bothered to google it right now lol.
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Follow up, i think the article i had read was related to this:
Edit: Yeah i checked the link you posted earlier and looks like you found it too 
So. Side question. Is Superman part Hornet since he also derives his power from the sun?
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