EE_
4th October 2013, 04:39 AM
Maybe this is how it all ends?
A friend of mine spotted some in Ohio, there are also reports of sighting in Illinois.
Forget about running from them, they can fly at 25 mph
The Chinese city living in fear of giant killer hornets
Jonathan Kaiman visits Ankang municipality where swarms of highly venomous hornets have killed 41 people in three months
Jonathan Kaiman in Ankang
theguardian.com, Friday 4 October 2013
http://rashmanly.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/mandarinia1.jpg
China: surge in fatal hornet attacks in Shaanxi province Chen pointed with a shaky hand at the small plot of cabbage, scallions and corn where his friend Yu Yihong was stung to death by giant hornets.
"When he got to the hospital, there were still two hornets in his trousers," says Chen, a local farmer who, like many villagers, declined to give his full name to a foreign journalist. "The hornets' poison was too strong – his liver and kidneys failed, and he couldn't urinate."
Yu, a square-jawed 40-year-old farmer in perfect health, had been harvesting his crops when he stepped on a nest of vespa mandarinia hornets concealed beneath a pile of dry corn husks. The hornets swarmed Yu, stinging him through his long-sleeve shirt and trousers. He ran, but the hornets chased him, stinging his arms and legs, his head and neck.
After Yu succumbed to his wounds and about 50 of his friends and relatives gathered to mourn his passing. Outside the farmer's mountainside home in Yuanba village, they ate preserved eggs, buckwheat noodles and boiled peanuts in silence; one set off a string of fireworks. Yu's wife and two children sat inside weeping.
Vespa mandarinia is the world's largest hornet, around the size of a human adult's thumb, yellow and black in colour and highly venomous. Their 6mm-long stingers carry a venom potent enough to dissolve human tissue. Victims may die of kidney failure or anaphylactic shock.
An Asian hornet (vespa mandarinia) eats a honeybee. The sting of the highly venomous giant hornet, which measures about the size of a human thumb, can dissolve human tissue and cause kidney failure. Photograph: Scott Camazine Yu's story is a tragic but increasingly common one in north-west China's Shaanxi province where, over the past three months alone, hornets have killed 41 people and injured a further 1,675. Ankang, a municipality in the province's south, appears to be the epicentre of the scourge. While hornets infest its mountainous rural areas every year – 36 residents were stung to death between 2002 and 2005 – locals and municipal officials say this year is tantamount to an epidemic, the worst they have ever seen.
At least some of the deaths were caused by vespa mandarinia, experts say. The species does not typically attack unless it feels its nest is threatened. But when it does, it can be fierce and fast – the hornets can fly at 25 miles per hour and cover 50 miles in a day. They nest in tree stumps or underground, making nests extremely difficult to detect.
Both locals and experts blame this year's scourge on climate change; the past year has been unusually warm, allowing a high number of hornets to survive the winter. Huang Ronghui, an official at the Ankang Forestry Bureau's pest control department, lists a host of other possibilities: the hornets may have been agitated by a dry spell, while labourers have been moving deeper and deeper into the mountains, disturbing their nests. "Other than this, hornets are attracted to bright colours and the smell of peoples' sweat, alcohol and sweet things," he told state media. "They're sensitive to movement, such as running people or animals."
The region has also been overrun by the Asian hornet vespa velutina, a slightly smaller species which can be equally dangerous. Hundreds, even thousands inhabit their nests, which typically hang from high places. In Chengxing village, a few miles downhill from a winding mountain road from Yu's hometown, 16-year-old Tan Xingjian points at a tree in the distance. Hanging from one thick branch was a pale, basketball-sized bulb, its surface alive with darting black specks. "That's where they live," Tan says. "We don't dare to go near there."
Ankang is on alert, with the local authorities posting warning notices online, on roadside tree trunks and on primary school walls. The crisis has exhausted Gong Zhenghong, the spiky-haired mayor of Hongshan township in rural Ankang. Since September, Gong has spent nearly every night wandering the township exterminating nests with four other cadres. He says there are 248 hornet nests in Hongshan with 175 are close to schools and roads.
Gong and his team survey nests by day; once the sun sets, they dress in homemade anti-hornet suits made of rain jackets and canvass, and burn the nests with spray-can flamethrowers. "They don't fly around at night," he says.
Firefighters destroy dead hornets in Ankang, Shaanxi province, China. Photograph: China Stringer Network/REUTERS Sometimes, his team begins work in the late evening and doesn't finish until 2am. "We'd normally send the fire squad to do this, but this year there were too many nests." Gong left his office, returned with a black rubbish bag, and pulled out the charred remains of a nest, the blackened tails of bulb-like larvae protruding from its combs.
Two other cities in Shaanxi – Hanzhong and Shangluo – have also been besieged by hornets, though the death tolls have been markedly lower. In southern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, a swarm of hornets attacked a primary school in mid-September, injuring 23 children and seven adults. The teacher, Li Zhiqiang, told pupils to hide under their desks and tried to fight the creatures off until he lost consciousness, state media reported.
The hornets seem ubiquitous in Ankang. In Liushui township, a smattering of two-storey concrete homes sandwiched between a lush hillside and a stagnant river, an elderly shopkeeper in a purple blazer says that the hornets have infested a cabbage patch near her home. "The government has been coming down and burning them, but they can't burn them all," she adds, pointing down into the brush. "I'm not willing to go down there."
Mu Conghui, a 55-year-old Ankang villager, was stung 200 times while tending her rice field in late August. "These hornets are terrifying – all at once they flew to my head, and when I stopped, they stung me so much that I couldn't budge," she told state media. "My legs were crawling with hornets. Right now my legs are covered with small sting holes – over the past two months I've received 13 dialysis treatments."
The Ankang government says it has removed 710 hives and sent 7m yuan (£707,000) to help affected areas. "We're doing everything we can, but there's only so much we can do," says Deng Xianghong, the deputy head of the Ankang propaganda department. "God has been unfair to us."
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/04/killer-hornets-chinese-city-living-in-fear
Dozens Killed By Freakishly Huge Hornets In China – And Now They Are Attacking People In The U.S. Too
By Michael Snyder, on September 30th, 2013
http://softypapa.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/suzumebachi-asian-giant-hornet-04.jpg?w=547
The photo of an Asian giant hornet posted above was taken by blogger Kurt Bell, and as you can see, these Asian giant hornets are freakishly huge.
They are also extremely aggressive and they are not afraid to attack people at all. And as you will read about below, getting stung by one of them is exceedingly painful. If they only attacked humans once in a while, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. Unfortunately, Asian giant hornets appear to be multiplying rapidly and they have killed dozens of people in China in recent months. But most Americans are not going to get too concerned about a plague of giant hornets on the other side of the planet. Well, what if I told you that Asian giant hornets are now spreading like wildfire in this country and attacking people all over the United States? Would I have your attention then? Because that is precisely what is happening.
The recent giant hornet attacks in China have made headlines all over the globe. For example, the following is an excerpt from a recent article in the Guardian…
Twenty-eight people have died and hundreds have been injured in a wave of attacks by giant hornets in central China, according to reports.
Victims described being chased for hundreds of meters by the creatures and stung as many as 200 times.
How would you like to be stung 200 times?
And when you get stung by one of these giant hornets, it is immensely painful and it can dissolve your skin…
Being stung feels “like a hot nail through my leg,” as one entomologist put it, and their venom can dissolve skin. They’re fast, too, flying up to 25 miles per hour (41 kilometers an hour). They’re also the largest hornets on the planet, reaching 5.5 centimeters (2.2 inches).
You can’t outrun these hornets and they are unbelievably vicious. Just check out what they do to other bees…
The Asian giant hornet is the world’s largest hornet, and is a voracious predator that dines on mantises, bees and other large insects. It has a deservedly evil reputation for wiping out entire hives containing thousands of honeybees by biting off the bees’ heads and then stealing their honey and bee larvae. The hornets are capable of flying up to 62 miles (100 kilometers) in a single day at speeds of 25 mph (40 km/h).
Asian giant hornets are five times larger than regular honey bees, and they have absolutely huge jaws. They work incredibly quickly and they can kill up to 40 honey bees in a single minute.
Perhaps this is one of the factors that is contributing to the massive decline in the honey bee population around the globe.
But much more frightening is what these giant hornets are now doing to humans. Just check out the following example from a recent Quartz article…
Here’s a chilling scene that Chen Changlin, an Ankang farmer, witnessed one evening a few days ago. As he harvested rice on evening, hornets swarmed a woman and child working nearby. When they reached Chen, they stung him for three minutes straight. Chen made it; the other two died. “The more you run, the more they want to chase you,” said another victim, whose kidneys were ravaged by the venom. When he was admitted to the hospital, his urine was the color of soy sauce.
Of course these giant predators no longer reside just in Asia. Thanks to “free trade”, they are now also in Europe…
That’s why bee populations in France, where Chinese hornets arrived via a Chinese pottery shipment in 2005, have already taken a hit. Since then, Chinese hornets have spread at a pace of up to 100 km (62 miles) a year. Within the last three years, they’ve invaded Spain, Portugal and Belgium; soon they’ll arrive in Italy and the UK, says the European Environment Agency.
And even though most Americans don’t realize this, they are also spreading all over the United States as well.
According to one very disturbing news report, there have been recent sightings of Asian giant hornets all over the United States…
Giant Hornet article includes reports of Asian Giant Hornets in Alabama, California, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, and West Virginia. One of the pictures from a contributor from Tennessee shows a European Hornet.
Last Fall posters reported aggressive infestations in recent years. In Georgia a poster reports he doesn’t go a day without seeing one of the giant hornets. One poster reports the insects flying into lights at night, and an infestation in a chimney with about 200 hornets getting inside the house. Many posters scoff at the comments that the insects aren’t aggressive. Some posters report that the large hornets are not affected by wasp/hornet spray.
Over time, Asian giant hornets will greatly multiply in this country and will be found almost everywhere.
So not only are millions of Americans losing their good paying jobs to “free trade”, we are also getting the added bonus of an endless plague of human-killing giant hornets.
These giant hornets don’t just attack little kids and elderly people. They will even attack full grown men. For example, just check out what happened to one man in Virginia…
I live in Richmond Virginia, & my parents live in King William Virginia. One day while visiting my folks, I was standing in their yard, talking to my mother with my arms crossed, when I heard what sounded like a rc airplane in a full on nosedive. I looked up just in time to see a humming bird sized hornet, identical to the picture of the Asian giant hornet, coming straight at me. It stung me on top of my ear & I have NEVER experienced such pain in my life, before, or since. The pain lasted for hours.
I am pierced & tattood all over, none of them hurt. This hurt. I cursed & cried like a little baby right in front of my mother. I am not allergic to bee or wasp stings, yet my entire face swelled up to extremely scary proportions. I have seen European hornets & cicada killers before. Nope, not it. Plus this thing was huge, & quite obviously, extremely aggressive, since I was doing NOTHING. Standing in the yard with my arms crossed. Not messing with a nest, not cutting grass, not doing jack. I have easily seen a dozen since that incident, & NO ONE will convince me they are not here. Yes it gets hot in VA, but NEVER over 100-105 degrees, so try again with the “It gets too hot here” B.S.. They ARE here.
Yes, they are here and now there is even a Facebook group dedicated to sharing spottings of Asian giant hornets in the United States.
What will you do when these vicious predators decide to take up residence in your neighborhood?
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/audio/video/2013/10/3/1380790233819/Mans-arm-after-wasp-attac-016.jpg
A friend of mine spotted some in Ohio, there are also reports of sighting in Illinois.
Forget about running from them, they can fly at 25 mph
The Chinese city living in fear of giant killer hornets
Jonathan Kaiman visits Ankang municipality where swarms of highly venomous hornets have killed 41 people in three months
Jonathan Kaiman in Ankang
theguardian.com, Friday 4 October 2013
http://rashmanly.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/mandarinia1.jpg
China: surge in fatal hornet attacks in Shaanxi province Chen pointed with a shaky hand at the small plot of cabbage, scallions and corn where his friend Yu Yihong was stung to death by giant hornets.
"When he got to the hospital, there were still two hornets in his trousers," says Chen, a local farmer who, like many villagers, declined to give his full name to a foreign journalist. "The hornets' poison was too strong – his liver and kidneys failed, and he couldn't urinate."
Yu, a square-jawed 40-year-old farmer in perfect health, had been harvesting his crops when he stepped on a nest of vespa mandarinia hornets concealed beneath a pile of dry corn husks. The hornets swarmed Yu, stinging him through his long-sleeve shirt and trousers. He ran, but the hornets chased him, stinging his arms and legs, his head and neck.
After Yu succumbed to his wounds and about 50 of his friends and relatives gathered to mourn his passing. Outside the farmer's mountainside home in Yuanba village, they ate preserved eggs, buckwheat noodles and boiled peanuts in silence; one set off a string of fireworks. Yu's wife and two children sat inside weeping.
Vespa mandarinia is the world's largest hornet, around the size of a human adult's thumb, yellow and black in colour and highly venomous. Their 6mm-long stingers carry a venom potent enough to dissolve human tissue. Victims may die of kidney failure or anaphylactic shock.
An Asian hornet (vespa mandarinia) eats a honeybee. The sting of the highly venomous giant hornet, which measures about the size of a human thumb, can dissolve human tissue and cause kidney failure. Photograph: Scott Camazine Yu's story is a tragic but increasingly common one in north-west China's Shaanxi province where, over the past three months alone, hornets have killed 41 people and injured a further 1,675. Ankang, a municipality in the province's south, appears to be the epicentre of the scourge. While hornets infest its mountainous rural areas every year – 36 residents were stung to death between 2002 and 2005 – locals and municipal officials say this year is tantamount to an epidemic, the worst they have ever seen.
At least some of the deaths were caused by vespa mandarinia, experts say. The species does not typically attack unless it feels its nest is threatened. But when it does, it can be fierce and fast – the hornets can fly at 25 miles per hour and cover 50 miles in a day. They nest in tree stumps or underground, making nests extremely difficult to detect.
Both locals and experts blame this year's scourge on climate change; the past year has been unusually warm, allowing a high number of hornets to survive the winter. Huang Ronghui, an official at the Ankang Forestry Bureau's pest control department, lists a host of other possibilities: the hornets may have been agitated by a dry spell, while labourers have been moving deeper and deeper into the mountains, disturbing their nests. "Other than this, hornets are attracted to bright colours and the smell of peoples' sweat, alcohol and sweet things," he told state media. "They're sensitive to movement, such as running people or animals."
The region has also been overrun by the Asian hornet vespa velutina, a slightly smaller species which can be equally dangerous. Hundreds, even thousands inhabit their nests, which typically hang from high places. In Chengxing village, a few miles downhill from a winding mountain road from Yu's hometown, 16-year-old Tan Xingjian points at a tree in the distance. Hanging from one thick branch was a pale, basketball-sized bulb, its surface alive with darting black specks. "That's where they live," Tan says. "We don't dare to go near there."
Ankang is on alert, with the local authorities posting warning notices online, on roadside tree trunks and on primary school walls. The crisis has exhausted Gong Zhenghong, the spiky-haired mayor of Hongshan township in rural Ankang. Since September, Gong has spent nearly every night wandering the township exterminating nests with four other cadres. He says there are 248 hornet nests in Hongshan with 175 are close to schools and roads.
Gong and his team survey nests by day; once the sun sets, they dress in homemade anti-hornet suits made of rain jackets and canvass, and burn the nests with spray-can flamethrowers. "They don't fly around at night," he says.
Firefighters destroy dead hornets in Ankang, Shaanxi province, China. Photograph: China Stringer Network/REUTERS Sometimes, his team begins work in the late evening and doesn't finish until 2am. "We'd normally send the fire squad to do this, but this year there were too many nests." Gong left his office, returned with a black rubbish bag, and pulled out the charred remains of a nest, the blackened tails of bulb-like larvae protruding from its combs.
Two other cities in Shaanxi – Hanzhong and Shangluo – have also been besieged by hornets, though the death tolls have been markedly lower. In southern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, a swarm of hornets attacked a primary school in mid-September, injuring 23 children and seven adults. The teacher, Li Zhiqiang, told pupils to hide under their desks and tried to fight the creatures off until he lost consciousness, state media reported.
The hornets seem ubiquitous in Ankang. In Liushui township, a smattering of two-storey concrete homes sandwiched between a lush hillside and a stagnant river, an elderly shopkeeper in a purple blazer says that the hornets have infested a cabbage patch near her home. "The government has been coming down and burning them, but they can't burn them all," she adds, pointing down into the brush. "I'm not willing to go down there."
Mu Conghui, a 55-year-old Ankang villager, was stung 200 times while tending her rice field in late August. "These hornets are terrifying – all at once they flew to my head, and when I stopped, they stung me so much that I couldn't budge," she told state media. "My legs were crawling with hornets. Right now my legs are covered with small sting holes – over the past two months I've received 13 dialysis treatments."
The Ankang government says it has removed 710 hives and sent 7m yuan (£707,000) to help affected areas. "We're doing everything we can, but there's only so much we can do," says Deng Xianghong, the deputy head of the Ankang propaganda department. "God has been unfair to us."
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/04/killer-hornets-chinese-city-living-in-fear
Dozens Killed By Freakishly Huge Hornets In China – And Now They Are Attacking People In The U.S. Too
By Michael Snyder, on September 30th, 2013
http://softypapa.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/suzumebachi-asian-giant-hornet-04.jpg?w=547
The photo of an Asian giant hornet posted above was taken by blogger Kurt Bell, and as you can see, these Asian giant hornets are freakishly huge.
They are also extremely aggressive and they are not afraid to attack people at all. And as you will read about below, getting stung by one of them is exceedingly painful. If they only attacked humans once in a while, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. Unfortunately, Asian giant hornets appear to be multiplying rapidly and they have killed dozens of people in China in recent months. But most Americans are not going to get too concerned about a plague of giant hornets on the other side of the planet. Well, what if I told you that Asian giant hornets are now spreading like wildfire in this country and attacking people all over the United States? Would I have your attention then? Because that is precisely what is happening.
The recent giant hornet attacks in China have made headlines all over the globe. For example, the following is an excerpt from a recent article in the Guardian…
Twenty-eight people have died and hundreds have been injured in a wave of attacks by giant hornets in central China, according to reports.
Victims described being chased for hundreds of meters by the creatures and stung as many as 200 times.
How would you like to be stung 200 times?
And when you get stung by one of these giant hornets, it is immensely painful and it can dissolve your skin…
Being stung feels “like a hot nail through my leg,” as one entomologist put it, and their venom can dissolve skin. They’re fast, too, flying up to 25 miles per hour (41 kilometers an hour). They’re also the largest hornets on the planet, reaching 5.5 centimeters (2.2 inches).
You can’t outrun these hornets and they are unbelievably vicious. Just check out what they do to other bees…
The Asian giant hornet is the world’s largest hornet, and is a voracious predator that dines on mantises, bees and other large insects. It has a deservedly evil reputation for wiping out entire hives containing thousands of honeybees by biting off the bees’ heads and then stealing their honey and bee larvae. The hornets are capable of flying up to 62 miles (100 kilometers) in a single day at speeds of 25 mph (40 km/h).
Asian giant hornets are five times larger than regular honey bees, and they have absolutely huge jaws. They work incredibly quickly and they can kill up to 40 honey bees in a single minute.
Perhaps this is one of the factors that is contributing to the massive decline in the honey bee population around the globe.
But much more frightening is what these giant hornets are now doing to humans. Just check out the following example from a recent Quartz article…
Here’s a chilling scene that Chen Changlin, an Ankang farmer, witnessed one evening a few days ago. As he harvested rice on evening, hornets swarmed a woman and child working nearby. When they reached Chen, they stung him for three minutes straight. Chen made it; the other two died. “The more you run, the more they want to chase you,” said another victim, whose kidneys were ravaged by the venom. When he was admitted to the hospital, his urine was the color of soy sauce.
Of course these giant predators no longer reside just in Asia. Thanks to “free trade”, they are now also in Europe…
That’s why bee populations in France, where Chinese hornets arrived via a Chinese pottery shipment in 2005, have already taken a hit. Since then, Chinese hornets have spread at a pace of up to 100 km (62 miles) a year. Within the last three years, they’ve invaded Spain, Portugal and Belgium; soon they’ll arrive in Italy and the UK, says the European Environment Agency.
And even though most Americans don’t realize this, they are also spreading all over the United States as well.
According to one very disturbing news report, there have been recent sightings of Asian giant hornets all over the United States…
Giant Hornet article includes reports of Asian Giant Hornets in Alabama, California, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, and West Virginia. One of the pictures from a contributor from Tennessee shows a European Hornet.
Last Fall posters reported aggressive infestations in recent years. In Georgia a poster reports he doesn’t go a day without seeing one of the giant hornets. One poster reports the insects flying into lights at night, and an infestation in a chimney with about 200 hornets getting inside the house. Many posters scoff at the comments that the insects aren’t aggressive. Some posters report that the large hornets are not affected by wasp/hornet spray.
Over time, Asian giant hornets will greatly multiply in this country and will be found almost everywhere.
So not only are millions of Americans losing their good paying jobs to “free trade”, we are also getting the added bonus of an endless plague of human-killing giant hornets.
These giant hornets don’t just attack little kids and elderly people. They will even attack full grown men. For example, just check out what happened to one man in Virginia…
I live in Richmond Virginia, & my parents live in King William Virginia. One day while visiting my folks, I was standing in their yard, talking to my mother with my arms crossed, when I heard what sounded like a rc airplane in a full on nosedive. I looked up just in time to see a humming bird sized hornet, identical to the picture of the Asian giant hornet, coming straight at me. It stung me on top of my ear & I have NEVER experienced such pain in my life, before, or since. The pain lasted for hours.
I am pierced & tattood all over, none of them hurt. This hurt. I cursed & cried like a little baby right in front of my mother. I am not allergic to bee or wasp stings, yet my entire face swelled up to extremely scary proportions. I have seen European hornets & cicada killers before. Nope, not it. Plus this thing was huge, & quite obviously, extremely aggressive, since I was doing NOTHING. Standing in the yard with my arms crossed. Not messing with a nest, not cutting grass, not doing jack. I have easily seen a dozen since that incident, & NO ONE will convince me they are not here. Yes it gets hot in VA, but NEVER over 100-105 degrees, so try again with the “It gets too hot here” B.S.. They ARE here.
Yes, they are here and now there is even a Facebook group dedicated to sharing spottings of Asian giant hornets in the United States.
What will you do when these vicious predators decide to take up residence in your neighborhood?
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/audio/video/2013/10/3/1380790233819/Mans-arm-after-wasp-attac-016.jpg