Said Sven Spichiger, the pest program manager at the Washington State Department of Agriculture, quoted in "'Murder Hornet' Has Been Eradicated From the U.S., Officials Say The hornet was discovered in a corner of Washington State. Five years later, a massive mobilization has eliminated the invasive species, at least for now" (NYT).
Murder hornets were a public obsession in the year 2020 — the year of the covid pandemic and a hotly contended presidential election. I was skeptical, blogging, on May 3rd:
People are desperate to concern themselves with something other than coronavirus and Joe Biden's sexuality.
I think that's why this story has legs — disgusting spindly legs — "‘Murder Hornets’ in the U.S.: The Rush to Stop the Asian Giant Hornet/Sightings of the Asian giant hornet have prompted fears that the vicious insect could establish itself in the United States and devastate bee populations."
That's in the New York Times, where I would expect a little more care not to randomly give off whiffs of xenophobia. Why are they insisting on calling it the "Asian giant hornet"? They already had "murder hornet" and "giant hornet." Why go big with "Asian"?
Dr. Looney said it was immediately clear that the state faced a serious problem, but with only two insects in hand and winter coming on, it was nearly impossible to determine how much the hornet had already made itself at home.
Must I worry about 2 insects simply because Dr. Looney — if that really is his name — finds the seriousness "immediately clear"?
That said, I am looking for more exciting articles that are not coronavirus or sex and Joe Biden.
What was the sex and Joe Biden topic? Had you remembered the murder hornets? Yesterday's ephemera. You remember covid, of course, but it's wearing thin. They're cuing up the next scary insect + disease. I see Gavin Newsom has declared an emergency — in California — over "bird flu." Which sounds like "bird flew." I guess that's why they usually say "avian flu." While you wait for whatever insects they've got cued up, you can watch the wonderful old movie "Killer Bees":
But seriously, congratulations to all the good people who swarmed together to conquer the murder hornets.
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“When we fight, we win.” The Vice President.
They were nothing to screw with. A horticulturalist friend got one in her shirt and had a painful, large, oozing wound for a year.
Now, joro spiders.
Don't forget Weekly World News's Killer Trees issue. Walking trees escaped from a lab in Brazil and were walking their way north. Their chief threat is to the slow-moving, like infants and old people.
Perhaps murder hornets have a niche environmental requirement, like solar farms.
The fact of the matter is, if the entire community hadn’t stood up and taken action... there is a real good chance that we would just all be living with the northern giant hornet, even for years to come.
"You mean like Democrats?"
"That's in the New York Times, where I would expect a little more care not to randomly give off whiffs of xenophobia. Why are they insisting on calling it the "Asian giant hornet"?
What else would one call Vespa Mandarinia, common name Asian giant hornet, which is native to China, SE Asia and Japan? Plus, if Donald Trump had used the term, the NYT would certainly have characterized it as xenophobic. Since he didn't there was no political advantage to call the term xenophobic. For further reference see China vs Wuflu.
I remember murder hornets, but that crisis didn't have legs. Once we started panicking over Covid, we lost interest.
With Trump and the other Republican Democrats starting to drain the swamp, corporate media contracting and DEI in remission, now would be a good time to change how we solve problems.
Rather than blow everything up into an existential crisis, everybody could do their jobs and the elite experts could shut up for a while. Media could inform us of what's going on, who's working on it, and how it got fixed.
Murder hornets, like other invasive species, are a real problem. It sounds like people are working on it, but we are going to need better journalists. Notice the fraught language in that article. "thousands of bees with their heads torn from their bodies" or "mandibles shaped like spiked shark fins".
Y2K was real. So was AIDS. Both took a lot of time, money and effort to address, but people didn't need to freak out about them.
The Left needs something to be mortally afraid of every minute of every day.
It was achieved by starting a murder-hornet female rights campaign.
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” (Mencken)
At the height of the killer wasp hysteria, I discovered one in my garage at night. My wife was coming home later that night, so I killed it. Later, I investigated to figure out if it was a killer wasp, but it turned out to be a Eastern cicada killer.
About the same size as a killer wasp, but according to what I could find out, harmless to humans.
How do you kill killer bees? With a bee bee gun. LOL.
I wasnt expecting a Killer bees movie, but a SNL sketch (like this the "bees" show up 2:00): https://youtu.be/_nXp3Vw3RU8?si=quWNLsTmrqc8njUM&t=120
I never encountered a Murder Hornet, but I got stung on the throat by a Reckless Endangerment Wasp once while I was riding my motorcycle. A close call.
Lol. I was stung by a manslaughter bee once. I was practically murdered.
Sigh......that "Killer Bees" movie seems to be more recent than the one in my memory from the 1970s. I think that was C. Thomas Howell, so from the 2000s at the earliest.
Indecent migration.
How do we know it was eradicated in even Washington State? We don't.
Florida is infested with Pythons in the Everglades. The 'Government' has tried for years to 'control' them. All they really have to do is put a $100 bounty on every Python killed and it's head delivered to the P&W. Yes DEAD. Kill 'em and bring in the head. Real simple. But....
Instead they have a program by the South Florida Water Management District that pays people to humanely euthanize pythons in designated areas. Contractors are paid $13–$18 per hour, plus $50 for each python up to 4 feet long.
What a joke! And that is the government.
As I read the heading of this post I thought it was about the continuing resolution until I got to murder hornets. It made me laugh.
Murderous migrants? We don't, we won't, we didn't, until mainstream news tailors could no longer offer sanctuary to the abortive, cruel, and unusual progress.
I read a subtext "We need government (state or federal) to solve problems like this, so please do not DOGE my department."
I was getting the movie confused with “The Savage Bees”. the scene I remember was a BW bug full of killer bees in the Astrodome. Looking back on it now, out of all the things they tried to get people to go to that place, maybe showing killer bees in there was not a good idea. Then again, safety concerns is a fairly new religion.
There are really only one kind of Killer Bees you need to know about, and they were led by John Belushi doing an incredibly xenophobic accent, in a striped bee costume with bobbly spring antennae, festooned with a sombrero and bandoliers.
I gave a ride to an outdoorsy type who told me wild hogs are treated as a public enemy. You can kill as many as you want whenever you want.
A college friend, driving a group of us way too fast on a highway with the windows rolled down, was hit at 85mph in the face by a large bee which managed to sting him just below the eye. A most exciting few seconds followed as my friend managed to maintain some control over the suddenly swerving car and avoid both other cars and the ditch. His face looked like it had been smacked with a fastball.
See the British anti-cobra campaign that set a bounty on cobras, in an attempt to decrease snake bites. Their program resulted first in immediate establishment of cobra breeding farms. Then when the bounty was eliminated, the snake breeders released their suddenly worthless stocks of cobras and the problem of cobra bites was many, many times worse than before all the effort to control cobras. Oh, yeah, don't forget the rat infestations when the bounty first led to capture of all local cobras.
Must I worry about 2 insects simply because Dr. Looney — if that really is his name — finds the seriousness "immediately clear"?
Must you worry, Althouse? You probably wanted to wait until they got over the mountains and were on their way to Wisconsin. By then, of course, it would have been way too late. Fortunately, some people did worry and took action.
Biden is a pedophile, or so the claim is with certain date, but without independent evidence. Under Democratic law it is a licit affair. #NoJudgment #NoLabels #LustAndAbortion
But what about those poor murder hornets who identify as honey bees? Is there no room in the insect rainbow pantheon for them?
Yes, Wince, exactly like Democrats.
NYT is desperate to sequester the news of why incest is a carved exception to homicide and decency laws that garners a license to abort.
Big Mike is such a buzz kill.
incredibly xenophobic accent = is this satire?
It's a good thing they were eliminated.
The American hornets/wasps are bad enough. those bastards will hunt you down and sting you, even if you're doing 9.9 100 yard dash.
Do the pythons in Southern Florida which are killing the native fauna.
Look up, look down,
Look all around,
In the trees and on the ground,
Because the ALB must be found.
The Asian Longhorn Beetle is also coming your way.
Better known perhaps as the Chinese Pallet Wood Stink Bug (unless that's another invasive species).
Murderous migration as the crow flies and Biden lies.
Murder hornet is a pejorative term. "Insects who experience compulsion toward homicide" is the accepted DEI term, thank you very much.
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