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Stink Bug Invasion Promises Foul Fall

EnglishLady

EnglishLady

Veteran Expediter
An invading force is laying the groundwork for a coup in the United States this year, and it's going on right under our noses. The brown marmorated stink bug, an insect species from Asia that has been steadily expanding its range since it landed on the East Coast 15 years ago, will begin to sneak into the homes of unprepared Americans by the hundreds in the coming weeks, entomologists say.

And because of an unusual late-season surge in the invasive pest's numbers, scientists and crop specialists worry that the bug could make one of its strongest showings ever when it comes out of hiding in the spring


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Stink Bug Invasion Promises Foul Fall - Yahoo! News
 
OntarioVanMan

OntarioVanMan

Retired Expediter
Owner/Operator
I had 1 of them fly into my van the other day...I never seen anything like that before....interesting....
 
Turtle

Turtle

Administrator
Staff member
Retired Expediter
EnglishLady said:
There are some REALLY weird bugs & creepy crawlies over here ROFL :p
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Well, of course, they're not from here, they're from China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan. Then again, most everything we have here is from there.

In China the bug has a native predator, a certain species of wasp. They keep the numbers way down. That species of wasp is not in the US. Some utterly retarded brilliant minds are strongly considering, and will likely introduce that China wasp species here in into the US in 2013 in an attempt to control the stink bug population. Never mind the fact that the intentional introduction of an invasive species to control another invasive species has never worked, anywhere, ever, those who have proposed this idea should first be forced to live in a room for 30 days with one million of these wasps and then see if they still want to do it.
 
EnglishLady

EnglishLady

Veteran Expediter
Turtle said:
Well, of course, they're not from here, they're from China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan. Then again, most everything we have here is from there.

In China the bug has a native predator, a certain species of wasp. They keep the numbers way down. That species of wasp is not in the US. Some utterly retarded brilliant minds are strongly considering, and will likely introduce that China wasp species here in into the US in 2013 in an attempt to control the stink bug population. Never mind the fact that the intentional introduction of an invasive species to control another invasive species has never worked, anywhere, ever, those who have proposed this idea should first be forced to live in a room for 30 days with one million of these wasps and then see if they still want to do it.
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Wasn't the "Killer Bee" introduced here to combat something else?
 
Turtle

Turtle

Administrator
Staff member
Retired Expediter
EnglishLady said:
Wasn't the "Killer Bee" introduced here to combat something else?
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No, that one was merely one of Jurassic Park's "Life will find a way" scenarios. Bees throughout Europe and Africa all developed certain traits that were homogenous with their local environments as they spread from their African origins into Europe and Asia. Mainly, they were in sync with the growing seasons of each region, with their brood cycles synchronized with the bloom period of local flora, forming a winter cluster in colder climates, migratory swarming in Africa, enhanced foraging behavior in desert areas, and numerous other inherited traits.

The African Honey Bee is a very aggressive honey bee that produces copious amounts of honey, but is ill-suited for tropical environments like you have in South America and southern North America. many of the various species of Western Honey Bee adapt easily to tropical environments, but are relatively poor producers of honey. They are extremely docile, however.

In the early 1950s a beekeeper-biologist in Brazil tried breeding different species of the aggressive but excellent honey producer with the more docile western bees in the hopes of producing a variety of docile bee that produces more honey that was also more easily adapted to the tropical environments.

He took all the correct precautions, with the bee hives having special excluder grates to prevent the larger queen bees and drones from getting out and mating with local queens and drones of European descent. However, in 1957 "life found a way" in the form of a temporary replacement beekeeper who accidentally released the bees into the wild near São Paulo, Brazil where the African queens and drones mated with domesticated local non-African queens and drones, resulting in aggressive bees that produce little honey, the exact opposite of what was intended. Their descendants have since spread throughout the Americas.
 
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