10/21/2005

Via boingboing

Bees Battle “Hornets From Hell”
Video in the News….A small but highly efficient killing machine lurks in the mountains of Japan—-the Japanese giant hornet. The voracious predator pumps out a dose of venom with an enzyme so strong it can dissolve human tissue. Just a handful of these hornets can kill 30,000 European honeybees within hours. Watch an attack of giant hornets on a beehive,..: Windows Media Player (high-speed connection required.)

Two odd points about the “Hornets From Hell”:
1. This “news” story is years old but somehow as a meme it exploded on the Internet as “bee balls” in late September. Why? Who knows? The National Geographic video is more than five years old.
2. Most Japanese people have the odd idea that warps and hornets are as lethal as cobras. Sure few rare people can have near-death allergic reaction to stings, but for most people a hornet sting is a very minor nuisence. Hell, I’ve sat on ground wasp nest and received more than 40 strings on my nether regions [ouch] without any major problems. In my Japanese office, only a gaijin would ever “brave” swatting a wasp. Even the salarymen would scream like schoolgirls at the sight a hornet. Weird.

UPDATE: The MSN-Mainichi says in today’s news that according to Japan’s “Ministry of Health Labor and Welfare, between about 20 and 30 people die each year after being stung by hornets. Last year 18 people died — a slight decrease but still more than the 11 people who died that year after being bitten by poisonous snakes.”