Giant hornets vs Killer Bees

[Chomper98]

Who would win?

[aabicus (LettuceBacon&Tomato)]

The one that isnt invading the others' territory

[LoyfeCycleProtector]

I'm guessing you're talking about more numerous communal wasps, like yellow jackets. Who ever has the numbers will eventually end up winning, but in my experience wasps are tougher than bees. Now, you throw ants in the mix, and you'll have a battle as epic as the ones in The Lord of the rigs movies.

[Petrie85]

If you're talking  the Giant Asian Hornet that I'm guessing the Killer Bees since they're more aggressive but the Giant Asian Hornet has very potent Venom to kill a human. So It's hard to say.

[Pangaea]

By "giant hornet", you mean the Asian giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia), right?

For those of you not familiar with it, this is the world's largest hornet, measuring over an inch and a half long with a wingspan of 2–3 inches. The Japanese subspecies (V. m. japonica) is probably the most popularly known. While its venom is not the most potent of any insect, it is agonizingly painful and can literally dissolve flesh. :blink: (It's worth mentioning, however, that the chemical responsible for this oft-cited quality of giant hornet venom is actually common to bee and wasp venoms, even that of the honeybee. It's the sheer amount of venom the hornet injects, and a failure to get treatment for it, that causes notable necrosis.) The good news is that as long as you're not allergic, the giant hornet's sting is usually not fatal, and like most stinging insects, it is unlikely to attack you in the first place as long as it is left alone.

What these hornets are really deadly to is other insects, including introduced European honeybees, which are not adapted to defend themselves against these hornets. It would seem that their stingers have trouble penetrating the hornets' thick exoskeletons. Apparently just one of these hornets can kill 30 to 40 honeybees a minute, decapitating them or stinging them to death. A hunting party of less than three dozen can completely wipe out a hive of 30,000 honeybees in a matter of hours (For an impressiveóif somewhat melodramaticóvideo, look here). The native Japanese honeybees, however, have a novel method of defending themselves against these marauders: when a scout discovers their hive, the bees swarm around it, vibrating their muscles to generate enough heat to literally cook the hornet to death, so that it never reveals the location of their hive to other hornets (video here).

Africanized honeybees, or "killer bees" are a hybrid of European and African honeybee subspecies (Apis mellifera). Their stings are no more deadly than those of normal honeybees, but they live in far larger swarms and are much more aggressive: quicker to attack and slower to give up a chase. These behavioral traits that make them more dangerous to humans, but unless their attacking swarms can create enough heat to kill a Japanese giant hornet, or are more likely to find chinks in the hornet's armor, I don't see how an attacking swarm of these hornets would have any more trouble with them than they would with European honeybees. (That's assuming you're talking about a swarm-to-swarm battle. A one-on-one between a killer bee and a giant hornet would be laughably one-sided, like pitting a red-bellied piranha against a bull shark.)

Sources:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/20...antHornets.html
http://everything2.com/title/Asian+giant+hornet
http://www.wild-facts.com/2011/wild-fact-6...n-giant-hornet/

[Petrie85]

They kill the most people in the world ever. One sting and you're pretty much a goner.

[DarkHououmon]

I know of no stinging insect whose sting is so deadly that just one kills a person, unless they happen to be very allergic to the stinging insect in question.

[jansenov]

The hornet's wings seem pretty vulnerable. And so do the eyes.

With the European bees, we can see on the video that the giant hornets only had to fight a small fraction of the hive's bees at any moment, since most of them went into hiding and started fighting only when the hornets reached them. The killer bee's strategy to bring the entire hive at once should prove far more effective. Perhaps they can wear the hornet down with the weight of their bodies or damage its wings? Or sting it in the eyes? I'm no expert. Just using my common sense, which maybe horribly misguided.  

[DarkHououmon]

I'm not so sure just how vulnerable the eyes of a giant hornet are. I touched them before (the hornet was dead and it was before I gained my phobia of dead insects) and from what I recall, they are really hard, not soft in any way. I would think stings would have a hard time penetrating.

[Petrie85]

What I read was it doesn't matter if you're allergic or not one sting from a Giant Asian Hornet can kill you.

[FlipperBoidSkua]

I was planning on taking a break from this forum, but this is a topic that greatly interests a bug-lover like me. Plus, a pet peeve of mine is when people automatically think one species (in this case, killer bees) would win a fight simply because it's more infamous among us humans. <_<

The fact of the matter is: Africanized Honeybees have not evolved a way to take down Japanese Giant Hornets. They don't have a heating ball instinct that the native Japanese bees do towards their enemies. Their best weapons (their stings) are pretty much useless against a Giant Hornet's armor. If a bee were to find a chink, that's great news for it, but it'll likely get slaughtered by the other hornets or by the hornet it's currently trying to sting.

The hornet's wings seem pretty vulnerable. And so do the eyes.

That does sound reasonable, but keep in mind that a hornet's wings hold no vital area for venom to inject and even a flightless hornet would be more than capable of killing bees. And the eyes are not like ours; they're not that much softer than the rest of the body.

Individual Giant Hornets have been known to overheat themselves when attacking a hive, but that makes little impact on the overall result.

The only time I would see killer bees legitimately win against a Giant Hornet is if they accidently swarm a heating ball around it, but they're unlikely to repeat the behavior in a swarm-on-swarm attack.

That's my two cents. Keep in mind, I am by no means an expert, so if you guys can take my words with a grain of salt if you like

[DarkHououmon]

Based on what I read, the asian giant hornet's sting isn't 100% fatal all the time. It can only kill someone not allergic if the dose is sufficient enough.

[Pangaea]

They kill the most people in the world ever. One sting and you're pretty much a goner.

What I read was it doesn't matter if you're allergic or not one sting from a Giant Asian Hornet can kill you.

That's a myth. Check the second source I cited. One sting (even three stings) is only likely to be fatal if you're allergic, or possibly if you leave it untreated, have preexisting health problems of some kind, etc.

In fact, I don't think there are really any venomous animals out there in which 1 sting/bite = certain death, especially if you can get proper first aid. Venomous snakes don't always inject a fatal quantity of venom (sometimes they don't inject venom at all); deadly spiders don't always manage to penetrate human skin with their fangs; even the Australian box jellyfish, one of the most venomous animals on Earth, doesn't usually kill a healthy adult unless at least eight feet of tentacle has contacted their skin. As far as I know, there's no animal on Earth whose venom has specifically evolved to kill humans. Some venomous creatures are certainly more dangerous than others, but the giant hornet probably isn't high on the list. Most sources I've seen say that they kill about 40 people a year, but if you think about it, that's not all that much. According to one book I own on dangerous animals, ants, bees, and wasps kill about 50 people per year in the United States (a dozen of those are honeybee stings), one particular species of box jelly (Chiropsalmus quadrigatus) kills 20–50 people a year, and elapid snakes (mostly kraits and cobras) kill tens of thousands. (Mind you, most of these snake deaths occur in countries where human populations are massive, and antivenom is hard to come by.) elephants in India kill 150 people per year. And there are nonvenomous animals that are more dangerous than giant hornets as well. In the U.S., an estimated 100 people are killed each year in car collisions with white-tailed deer (more deaths than are caused by any of the country's venomous or predatory animals); in India, elephants kill 150 people per year; worldwide, saltwater crocodiles have been estimated to kill as many as a thousand people a year. And don't even get me started on deaths from mosquito bites as a result of malaria and other diseases…

Plus, a pet peeve of mine is when people automatically think one species (in this case, killer bees) would win a fight simply because it's more infamous among us humans. <_<

Same here (*cough* T. rex vs. Spinosaurus). For that matteróno offense to anyoneó"X animal vs. Y animal" scenarios in general are rather ridiculous to me. And the way I see it, in this particular case, it's kind of an uneven fight no matter what the circumstances, since one of the combatants can only win if it grossly outnumbers the other and/or has an extreme stroke of luck. (And for all I know, giant hornets may be resistant or immune to bee venom.)

Source:
The Book of Deadly Animals by Gordon Grice

[DarkHououmon]

I tend to like Y Animal VS X Animal scenarios at times. I find them to be pretty fun, and I sometimes like trying to think who might win or who both of them could win depending on circumstances.

[F-14 Ace]

I'll just leave this here...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDSf3Kshq1M