Some insects are more tolerable than others. See a ladybug crawling on a wall? Scoop it up and take it outside so it can protect your flowers. But if a red wasp gets inside? Kill it. Where's that flamethrower?
Over the weekend, Twitter was full of people sharing headlines about so-called "murder hornets," and complaining about how 2020 is continuing to dial up the pain. The jury is still out on whether this year is redeemable, but murder hornets? No thanks.
The hornets are from Asia originally, and they kill 50 people a year in Japan. But more worrying in environmental terms is the fact that they can kill entire honeybee colonies in a matter of hours. Bees have been having enough trouble surviving over the last few years, with populations dwindling, sometimes crashing, across the planet.
And that's a real problem. Just ask any farmer who the No. 1 pollinator is. You can thank the bees for fruits and veggies. And these hornets are just another problem for them.
Well, most of them.
Fox News reported the Japanese honeybee has an interesting defense against the murder hornets: "Bees in Japan have been known to form a ball around the invader and vibrate to produce heat, which can essentially cook a hornet to death. The report said bees can survive in extreme temperatures and can kill a hornet in an hour."
They're burning the hornets to death? Never mind about the flamethrower.
The one thing these hornets won't get from us is sympathy. We're rooting for the honeybees.
Editorial on 05/06/2020