I’mfrom Alberta. My favorite party trick when talking to non-native Albertans is to pull up the “world rat population” map: https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/657947826782505650/ I have no idea how accurate it is, of course.
Yeah I don’t think this map is accurate. This maps states that rats don’t inhabit Iceland, but I’ve personally seen them in Reykjavík.
There's a big difference though: It's well known that the rat population in Reykjavik are transitory tourists, often visiting purely for the spectacular volcano tours in the area.
1994: We'll need airtight space suits for an Ebola outbreak. 2020: Surgical masks are a bit much to expect people to wear during a pandemic, Ebola has been circulating in Congo since 2014, and we'll need airtight space suits for a murder hornet outbreak. Truly, the 90s were a simpler time.
Had we all been wearing surgical masks in public since the 90s, probably well over a million lives would have been saved by now from flu deaths alone. Basically, since the 90s we've put a much much higher value on human life. I expect mask usage to extend far beyond covid and handshaking to cease being a cultural greeting.
Who needs to take the risk of physical human contact or to see the smile of a stranger walking down the street when you can survive a few years longer depressed inside a sterile bubble.
It makes me a little nauseous to think about all the resources going to tracking down these insects, but this is truly an area where an ounce of prevention is worth many pounds of cure. The scope of North America's invasive species problem is enormous. For many folks in urban areas, it's possible that you might go your whole day only encountering one native bird species (American Crow), but a whole host of invasive s…
Not a beekeeper but it’s pretty easy to connect the dots from bee extinction to ecological collapse. No pollinators leads to decreased germination which leads to less food for the lower levels of the food chain and on and on
Bees aren't the only pollinators out there. Yes, they are super important, but others exist. https://www.zmescience.com/ecology/animals-ecology/incredibl...
I was curious about this and found this YouTube video. https://youtu.be/EZ1eAM8CChc 30,000 bees killed by just 30 hornets in an hour or so. The bees just have no defence against them at all. Brutal.
Murder hornets are a real threat to honey bee hives. A handful of hornets can take out a hive of thousands. What's interesting is the way that honey bees defend against them. A bunch of bees surround each hornet, then they intensify the flapping of their wings, which then generates enough heat to kill the hornet. In other words, the hornets are cooked alive.
Bees form a mass in winter and work their wing muscles to keep themselves warm, rotating bees between inside and surface so none gets too cold for too long. So they did have a base behavior from which the surround-and-cook behavior could evolve.
When I first heard about the hornet defense I wondered how on Earth the bees could've come up with that. But if they already clumped up for warmth it's a lot more scrutable.
I've never had to deal with a murder hornet infestation, but I can approve of their 'vacuum' method for clearing yellowjacket nests in high-traffic areas. Partially fill a shop vac with soapy water, stick the nozzle as close to the nest entrance as possible, then turn on the vacuum and hear the wasps get sucked into the machine as they try to enter or exit the nest. It takes a few hours, and potentially a couple of s…
I'm no expert, but I've read a bit about Vespula vulgaris (the most common sort of wasp in the UK) and tackled a few nests in the past. My impression is that if you put a vacuum cleaner next to the entrance you may, if you're lucky, catch nearly all the wasps that leave the nest, but the queen never leaves the nest, and the eggs and larvae don't leave the nest, and I think there may also be some workers that stay in…
That's why you use dust or pyrethrin spray as well, and seal them in afterwards. Hot burning wasp death!
The department may very well need more significant resources to continue this fight, as will surrounding states if Washington isn't effective in fighting this. I'm not against government spending. I think there are plenty of problems that market forces alone cannot solve. I think the government should provide a solid safety net for its citizens. That is precisely why I lament the resources required for this. They are…
I don't see what there is to lament. If this is necessary spending (it seems it is) and there is other necessary spending, then it seems we must pay for both of those things. I guess we could wish that the hornets never arrived here, but the life of a government is solving thousands of problems like these. If not the hornets, it would be something else. The uplifting moment is that this was a successful containment.…
Yes, we should do both things, and the hornet issue is essential spending. But resources are limited, and there are plenty of people don't consider safety-net spending essential. That's my lament, that between hornets and people, few will dispute the necessity of dealing with the first, while plenty will the second.
Murder hornets are a real threat to honey bee hives. A handful of hornets can take out a hive of thousands. What's interesting is the way that honey bees defend against them. A bunch of bees surround each hornet, then they intensify the flapping of their wings, which then generates enough heat to kill the hornet. In other words, the hornets are cooked alive.
It’s worth noting that the honeybee defense mechanism you describe is unique to Asian honeybees, which evolved this defense specifically because of the native Asian giant hornet / murder hornet. European honeybees, which are used in most of the world, have no such defense mechanism and would indeed be helplessly slaughtered by these hornets. I’d definitely advocate watching some YouTube footage about these creatures,…
Why don't we cross-breed European with Asian honeybees? Or just start using Asian honeybees?
I was kayaking on the John Day river in northern central Oregon in 2017 and ran into a moderately sized swarm of these hornets crawling on the mud eating other bugs. Definitely been well over two years since they showed up in that part of Oregon.