September 3, 2006...1:25 pm

Vespa mandarinia

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The world’s largest wasp.

The hornets often attack honeybee hives with the goal of obtaining the honeybee larvae. The hornets can devastate a colony of honeybees: a single hornet can kill as many as 40 honeybees per minute; it takes only a few of these hornets a few hours to exterminate the population of a 30,000-member honeybee hive, leaving a trail of severed insect heads and limbs. Once a hive is emptied of all defending bees, the hornets carry the honeybee larvae back to feed to their own larvae.

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