Proof of Darwinism! How Japanese honey bees evolved to defend themselves from hornets

As a follow up to yesterday’s post, “How honey bees make honey,” Philip M. in England sends this from Wikipedia’s article on hornets, creatures which, the article tells us, have the capability of exterminating an entire hive of honey bees in short order:

Although a handful of Asian giant hornets can easily defeat the defenses of many individual honey bees, whose small stings cannot inflict much damage against such a large predator, the Japanese honey bee (Apis cerana japonica) possesses a collective defense against them.

When a hornet scout locates and approaches a Japanese honey bee hive it will emit specific pheromonal hunting signals. When the honey bees detect these pheromones, a hundred or so will gather near the entrance of the nest and keep it open, apparently to draw the hornet further into the hive or allow it to enter on its own. As the hornet enters the nest, a large mob of about five hundred honey bees surrounds it, completely covering it and preventing it from moving, and begin quickly vibrating their flight muscles. This has the effect of raising the temperature of the honey bee mass to 47 °C (117 °F). The honey bees can just about tolerate this temperature, but the hornet cannot survive more than 46 °C (115 °F), so it dies. Often several bees perish along with the intruder, but the death of the hornet scout prevents it from summoning reinforcements which would wipe out the colony.[9]

LA replies:

It’s just fantastic. Wherever we turn, we are confronted with further definitive proof of the Darwinian theory of the evolution of living beings by random genetic mutation and natural selection—proof that only superstitious religious believers would resist! In this case, we can clearly see how random genetic mutations in the Japanese honey bee led, one by one, to the specific adaptations of honey bee behavior by which the bees permit the hornet to enter the hive, then surround the intruder in a mass of 500 bees, then vibrate their flight muscles in unison to raise the temperature of the hornet to the point where the hornet expires but the bees are not harmed.

Of course, those annoying intelligent design fundamentalists will ask, how could the random-mutation-based behavior that leads the bees to allow the hornet to enter the hive be selected, in the absence of the further random-mutation-based bee behavior that kills the hornet before the hornet starts exterminating the bees? The IDers call this argument by the absurd term irreducible complexity, which they say means that all the evolved behavior would have to appear and work together, for any one of the evolved behaviors to be selected. This just shows the low IQ of the god-hoppers. As any idiot can see, the behavior permitting the hornet to enter the hive still helped advance the survival of the bees, because allowing the hornet to enter the nest enhanced the bees’ tolerance for species diversity which helped them to function and adapt better in the diverse world of nature, which gave them an advantage over other bees that were less tolerant of diversity. Later, when one hive of bees, by a further random accidental mutation, developed the behavior that killed the hornet, that also was selected, because, despite the advantages of tolerance of diversity, some hornets, alienated by the insufficient efforts by the bees to assimilate the hornets into the bee hive, would strike out in understandable anger and kill the bees, and so those hives that killed the hornets first were selected over the hives that didn’t. It all makes complete sense, and, again, only low IQ people who insist on believing in some divine lever-puller in the sky would think otherwise.

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Carol Iannone writes:

Super! This is the kind of thing our side should be doing more of. Would work better than the IDers’ laborious efforts.

Philip M. writes:

Evolution combined with tolerance and multiculturalism—if the MSM ever pick up on this idea, you will get a Nobel prize!

Having just watched footage of thousands of docile Euro-bees get horribly slaughtered by a few Mus..er, hornets, it was difficult not to draw other conclusions! The hornets even kill by decapitation, just like the ROP (religion of peace).

LA writes:

See Anti-Darwinism: a eollection.

J. writes:

Sounds like the liberal horde technique of surrounding a non-believer with flapdoddle until his brain also turns to mush.

Robert B. writes:

Here is a great video of Japanese honey bees attacking a hornet.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 06, 2008 12:05 PM | Send