 Apis mellifera, the most common honeybee found around the world. These wasps will fly many miles looking for beehives to raid. They can fly as far as 60 miles in a day at 25 miles per hour. A searching hornet may actually follow a foraging bee back to its hive. Once finding the hive it attacks giving off the alarm pheromone attracting other hornet in the vicinity. Ultimately they typically attack in force with a relatively small but very effective army of 30 or more. You wouldn’t think such a small army would be that successful since a beehive can have upwards of 80,000 bees. However, one hornet can kill 40 bees a minute. Unfortunately honeybees possess relatively small stingers that are of minimal use in penetrating the thick exocutile of the invading hornets nor do they defend in mass. The hornets descend on the hive and systematically one by one cut the bees in half. In the interest of efficiency they typically cut off the defending bees heads. After a few hours the hive contains few if any adult bees but there are piles of heads, limbs and various other body parts. At that point the hornets gorge on the honey and rip the bee larvae (young) and pupae from their cells and carry them back to their nest to feed to their young.
However all is not totally lost. There is different species of honeybee which naturally occurs in Japan that has a defensive tactic it uses against these invaders. When a single hornet in search a beehive is detected, hundreds of the worker bees gather at the hive entrance but readily allow the hornet to enter. Once in the hive the bees immediately surround and totally cover the hornet with a ball-like mass of up to 500 individuals. They prevent the hornet from moving and begin to vibrate their wings muscles. This action produces heat raising the temperature in the center of the mass (where the hornet occurs) to around 117 F. This temperature is not lethal to the bees but the hornet cannot tolerate temperatures above 113 F and subsequently dies. Of course action prevents the “scout” hornet