Posted on 08/08/2009 6:31:59 AM PDT by decimon
Viruses, grueling journeys, monoculture diets. U.S. honeybees have had it rough lately, and millions have perished from the mysterious colony collapse disorder (CCD). But now some of the nation's bees have a new threat to contend with: ants. And not just any ants. These ants are crazy—Rasberry crazy ants (Paratrenicha species near pubens), to be precise.
Named for their helter-skelter scamper, which contrasts with most ants' standard rank-and-file march, the tiny invasive ants were first noticed in near Houston, Texas, in 2002 and have been destroying electronics, pestering picnickers and gunking up sewage pumps ever since. And now they have started to go after local honeybee hives, according to a recent Associated Press report.
Beekeepers say the omnivorous ants swarming the hives appear to be less interested in the sweet honey inside than they are in the bee larvae there. And once a hive is decimated, the ants will take over and use it to raise their own young. One beekeeper reported that the ants had destroyed about 100 of his hives in the past year. Aside from the crops they help to pollinate, the bees also produce about 4.9 million pounds of honey a year, the AP said.
(Excerpt) Read more at scientificamerican.com ...
AND killer BEES?
Nature survives!
Eliminates man’s follies...Killer bees.
If we could only draw up a contract with them to leave the bees alone and go for the fire ants.....
I first saw these ants in Mexico and thought they were drunk. They truly are “crazy”.
These things are a real nuisance. They were EVERYWHERE last summer, but I haven’t seen them so much this year. Maybe the dry weather?
They don't bite like fire ants, do they?
Fire ants sting. Ants, bees, and wasps are all related, which is why they all have colonies with queens, a similar body plan, and ants can have stingers.
No. They just swarm all over the place. They get into electrical equipment, phone equipment, etc. and screw things up.
There is a good video here.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5781180.html
Catastrophic?
Thanks. Should call them PITA ants.
These ants are not crazy. They follow a typical strategy of searching for food and enemy ant hills, a method ingrained in every type of ant, but more deliberate in certain species than others.
Large black wood ants do the same thing, sending packs of search and destroy teams of 4-5 ants. Once they find an enemy ant hill maiming them, they go back to their home hill and the next day they all gather up for an attack in very orderly fashion with devastating effects.
Other ants are more pastoral and simply look for food sending such scout parties about. It helps keep ant population that does nothing on the hill to a low and it brings food back. They never come back until they found food spots. Then they go in their orderly fashion to the food spot and treat the hill.
Once my laundry fell on the ground and a fire ant went into my underwear. Yep, sure enough, it went for the wrong end of you know what. Folkes thought I had caught an STD. The itching was so bad, it was embarassing.
I've noticed the same thing & wondered also if it was the extreme heat and/or drought.
Maybe they expend too much wasted energy running around in those wild crazy-8 formations to thrive under those conditions?
I know I sure don't feel much like procreating in this godawful infernal weather myself!
;-)
Seems easy to prevent, at each hive, with the proper ant baits?
I live north of the frost line. So every winter when I’m out there scraping ice off of the car windows or shoveling show, I think about things like fire ant, killer bees, scorpions, and all of the other “natural wonders” we are spared because of our climate.
I know I sure don’t feel much like procreating in this godawful infernal weather myself!
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Here in South Carolina the summer has been cooler than normal except for a few days and this is the first time in years that we have had enough rain so that my centipede grass hasn’t all turned brown. Yesterday was hot, with a high around 95 or so but that is just normal weather for this time of year here.
I can't understand for the life of me why, but Karl Rove seems to have left his Weather Machine dial on "Deep Fry" for Texas - and only Texas - this summer for some reason.
What's really strange about that is that he just put his DC house on the market & is supposedly moving back to live here full time again.
Hmmmmm, then again, maybe it's all part of yet another diabolical conservative plot he hatched to get rid of all those pesky crazy ants here before he moves back?
Dang it, where's FEMA when ya need 'em?;-)
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