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Asian Giant Hornet — printable fact sheet
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Asian Giant Hornet
Vespa mandarinia
The Asian giant hornet is the largest hornet on Earth, and its reputation rests on what a few dozen of them can do to a beehive. A scout marks a colony with a pheromone, and the raiding party that follows does not sting the bees — it decapitates them, working through a hive of t…
Did you know?
- A small group of Asian Giant Hornets can destroy an entire honeybee colony within a few hours by entering a 'slaughter phase,' where they rapidly kill adult bees to harvest larvae and pupae.
- A few dozen can destroy a hive of tens of thousands of honeybees in hours — they decapitate the bees rather than sting them. Japanese honeybees kill the scouts by mobbing them and cooking them alive: the ball of bees heats past the hornet's tolerance but stays just below their own. European honeybees have no such defence, having never evolved alongside it. Its sting is long enough to pierce a beekeeping suit.
What I learned
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