# Video: 30 wasps kill 30,000 honeybees. Very cool.
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-30-wasps-kill-30-000-honeybees-very-cool/250634
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [June 16, 2004, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-30-wasps-kill-30-000-honeybees-very-cool/250634 "2004-06-16T12:19:20Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2004, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-30-wasps-kill-30-000-honeybees-very-cool/250634/1 "2004-06-16T12:19:20Z")
[National Geographic](http://www.olympus.co.jp/en/magazine/pursuit/200301/movie/movie_mp_b.html) Cool and scary.
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### Author:  [@Hal\_Briston](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hal_Briston)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2004, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-30-wasps-kill-30-000-honeybees-very-cool/250634/2 "2004-06-16T12:27:39Z")
_Circle Of Life_ and all that, but awwww…poor 'lil honeybees. ☹
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### Author:  [@NurseCarmen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NurseCarmen)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2004, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-30-wasps-kill-30-000-honeybees-very-cool/250634/3 "2004-06-16T12:44:15Z")
Those honey bee heads sure do pop off easy, don’t they?
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### Author:  [@lno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lno)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2004, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-30-wasps-kill-30-000-honeybees-very-cool/250634/4 "2004-06-16T12:49:55Z")
I was thinking that _The Ride of the Valkyries_ would have been a good music choice for the initial onslaught.
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### Author:  [@buttonjockey308](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buttonjockey308)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2004, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-30-wasps-kill-30-000-honeybees-very-cool/250634/5 "2004-06-16T13:02:08Z")
Aw jeez, now I’m gonna be depressed all day. Poor hunnybees.
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### Author:  [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2004, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-30-wasps-kill-30-000-honeybees-very-cool/250634/6 "2004-06-16T13:02:40Z")
Amazing! I would never have thought that each hornet could kill a thousand bees. Can’t a bee’s sting puncture a hornet body???
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### Author:  [@lno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lno)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2004, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-30-wasps-kill-30-000-honeybees-very-cool/250634/7 "2004-06-16T13:10:54Z")
> [@clairobscur](#):
>
> Amazing! I would never have thought that each hornet could kill a thousand bees. Can’t a bee’s sting puncture a hornet body???
The narrator mentioned that the bees killed a few hornets by puncturing the armor with their stingers, but apparently it’s pretty difficult.
I’d say it’s akin to hitting a two-meter exhaust port after flying through an equatorial trench on a space station, or maybe just bulls-eyeing womp rats in a T-16 skyhopper back home.
If those bees only had Sir Alec Guinness giving them moral support . . .
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### Author:  [@DeadlyAccurate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DeadlyAccurate)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2004, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-30-wasps-kill-30-000-honeybees-very-cool/250634/8 "2004-06-16T13:11:11Z")
That video definitely wins the Best Melodrama In A Documentary award. 🙂
Pretty cool, though very freaky.
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### Author:  [@buttonjockey308](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buttonjockey308)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2004, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-30-wasps-kill-30-000-honeybees-very-cool/250634/9 "2004-06-16T13:12:52Z")
Didja see the way that one held on to that nail? Wow.
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### Author:  [@Ale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ale)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2004, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-30-wasps-kill-30-000-honeybees-very-cool/250634/10 "2004-06-16T13:12:53Z")
Holy killer Vespids!, I expected to see a little winged Gandalf coming to the rescue at the break of dawn… :eek:
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### Author:  [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2004, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-30-wasps-kill-30-000-honeybees-very-cool/250634/11 "2004-06-16T13:14:35Z")
Quite an impressive show! Give a lot of credit to the film editors, and the dramatic sound effects/music selectors for the punch of that piece.
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### Author:  [@CrankyAsAnOldMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CrankyAsAnOldMan)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2004, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-30-wasps-kill-30-000-honeybees-very-cool/250634/12 "2004-06-16T15:04:41Z")
Yipes! I’ll have to watch this at home (now, at work, I have trouble with movie files). But aren’t we already in trouble due to a honeybee shortage? BAD WASPS!
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### Author:  [@lno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lno)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2004, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-30-wasps-kill-30-000-honeybees-very-cool/250634/13 "2004-06-16T15:58:30Z")
Truck hauling bees crashes in Montana
Dumps honey, sending bees on rampage
> [@](#):
>
> BOZEMAN, Montana (AP) – A tractor-trailer overturned on a curve on a highway, spilling its load of hundreds of bee hives and unleashing some nine million angry honey bees.
>
> …
>
> “I had to kick the windshield out of the front of the cab and the bees were on me from that moment,” said Miller, 41. “I’ve never felt so much fear in my life.”
Nine million honeybees? Why, they’d only need nine thousand hornets to take care of that!
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### Author:  [@Epimetheus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Epimetheus)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2004, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-30-wasps-kill-30-000-honeybees-very-cool/250634/14 "2004-06-16T16:23:08Z")
Very nice video! A bit creepy, but then I always did know I hated wasps.
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### Author:  [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2004, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-30-wasps-kill-30-000-honeybees-very-cool/250634/15 "2004-06-16T16:31:07Z")
Yipes. Someday I expect to see that on the History Channel as “Hitler’s Wasps.”
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### Author:  [@ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2004, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-30-wasps-kill-30-000-honeybees-very-cool/250634/16 "2004-06-16T17:20:22Z")
I’m having some trouble digging up a cite, but one of my “pet biology stories” from a few years back involved the Asian Bee’s ability to defend a hive from an uninvited wasp scout.
Wasps will attempt to take over bee hives, and the coup will usually start with one or two wasps just looking around. If the wasps discover a hive prime for the plucking, and they are able to leave and share the location with back-up, the bees would likely face a fate similar to that on the video.
But the Asian bees have evolved some preventative tricks up their sleeves, even if their stingers don’t have enough oomph. If a wasp scout is encountered near the hive, the bees will dog-pile on top of it and literally bake it to death by increasing their exothermic activities (like rapidly beating their wings) the same way they usually regulate temperatures within the hive. None of the fighting drones are lost, as there is no stinging involved, and they conserve troops just in case there are more scouts to come. If they can succeed long enough picking them off one at a time, their hive may very well go undetected by the rest of the wasps.
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### Author:  [@Master\_Wang-Ka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Master_Wang-Ka)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2004, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-30-wasps-kill-30-000-honeybees-very-cool/250634/17 "2004-06-16T17:32:55Z")
Dramatic.
Although I think the dubbed-in aircraft sounds and screams were a bit much.
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### Author:  [@teela\_brown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/teela_brown)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2004, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-30-wasps-kill-30-000-honeybees-very-cool/250634/18 "2004-06-16T17:59:24Z")
Very fascinating video. Thanks for posting it.
I can’t get sound at work, so apologies if the narrator already said this. _Now_ we see why honeybees have to be so hair-trigger aggressive about defending their hives. I never knew there were predatory hornets able to pull off a hive invasion like that.
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### Author:  [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2004, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-30-wasps-kill-30-000-honeybees-very-cool/250634/19 "2004-06-16T17:59:49Z")
Am I the only person who is afraid to watch this?
I mean it sounds cool and all but bees and wasps freak me out and I don’t know if I want to watch.
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### Author:  [@Francesca](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francesca)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2004, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-30-wasps-kill-30-000-honeybees-very-cool/250634/20 "2004-06-16T18:04:54Z")
They are evil. EVIL.
_shudder_
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