The Huge, Bee-Decapitating Hornet That Can’t Survive Group Hugs | Hacker News Reader

The Huge, Bee-Decapitating Hornet That Can’t Survive Group Hugs

wired.com

30 pointsdavidhcs37 comments

I WANT TO SAY: thanks wired for the new anti-adblock campaign. You just saved me 10 minutes of my life reading about bee beheading hornets. Now back to programming.

Interesting. I didn't see anything like that. Maybe noscript = win?

If you're blocking their cookies, or blocking scripts (because they increment read articles count with js for some reason) then you don't feel a thing indeed. Also, it doesn't seem to detect DNS based blocking.

Same here.

One fun quote, though: "the tiny band of marauders can wipe out a colony of 30,000 bees in a few hours, a glut of beheadings that makes the French Revolution look like Dance Dance Revolution."

Oops. http://imgur.com/6koHMyI

Why would anbody pay $1/week for reading that article we were click-baited into?

By the way, what's the amount Wired would make on ads if I read that article? A few cents? That's probably what I'd pay given a good micropayment system for reading that single article. I'm not interested in a subscription (and even less in my personal data being in their database along with that subscription).

"[The European honey bee] hasn’t stumbled upon the swarm countermeasure, so the hornet scout inevitably marks a European bee nest and returns with its friends."

Given how devastatingly effective these hornets are, the honey bee swarming behaviour seems to be a completely "over-the-top" reaction that thankfully works for them, although the bees (surely?) have no idea why.

Have any beekeepers been successful teaching European (or any other type of) honey bees new, complex behaviours? If they have, how do newly acquired behavrioual patterns spread beyond the initial target hive?

How do you go about "teaching European honey bees new, complex behaviors"?

That's exactly what I'm wondering - whether there have been any instances of deliberate human-caused epigenetic changes in bees. In light of @ansible's sister comment that worker bees only live a few months, teaching or learning any new behaviour, let alone one as complex as recognizing and swarming an intruder to death, seems to be even more unlikely.

Bees are a eusocial organism. While individual bees are dumb/unable to understand their actions, as a whole, bees are remarkably intelligent.

Bees already swarm and kill intruders, but simply lack the understanding of how to bake the wasps. I think a cross breeding program may take care of that issue - but hybridization can bring other problems (see African bees mixing with European).

Uh, they're bees. The workers only live a few months. You're not going to "teach" them anything.

We'd be looking at genetic modification to get new instincts into a particular species of bee.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hymenoptera_training

I just got "ad walled" by wired, putting a huge paywall like thing in front of the text talking about ad blockers. Anybody seen things like that? Certainly won't click the next wired link.

Yep, looks like they've started doing it. There was a discussion about their adwall plans last week.

And of course the reaction was the Anti-Adblock Killer (AAK) list, which you can subscribe to in the blocker of your choice: http://reek.github.io/anti-adblock-killer/

Yup. Tried for a few seconds to add a custom blocking rule and then immediately left the page. I empathize with content creators, but this reeks of desperation.

I don't know. I took the two seconds to unblock them. How would you have implemented it to look less desperate?

Using Firefox, I just reloaded the page and then hit the Reader View button before the popup came back.

Also a great idea! Seldom used that feature until now.

Same here, and same here.

It seems to be javascript. Disabling 1st-party scripts in uBlock Origin got rid of it for me.

Disabling 1st-party scripts in uBlock Origin got rid of it for me.

I can't find this option. Where is it?

it is actually uMatrix. I can conform that it works.

If you open up add-ons find uBlock Origin, press the "go to dashboard" button the first page has a bunch of checkboxes. At the bottom of the first group there is a check box called "I am an advanced user ..." Check that and now you have a mini uMatrix in your uBlock Origin menu.

Global block/allow is the left column, local (to the current domain) block/allow is the right column. I always globally block 3rd party scripts and frames and locally allow things like ajax.google.com when sites are borked.

Apparently now I need to start locally blocking 1st party scripts on sites too because of shenanigans like this.

I think it's their prerogative to say "either get served ads, become a paying member, or leave." I imagine they wont mourn the loss of someone who would have likely not brought them revenue in any form, ever.

That came off reading much more judgy than I had intended. I meant it's their prerogative in the same sense that serving the ads in first place was their prerogative, not that there is a moral imperative to listen when they do.

Part of the reason I use Addblock rather than another plugin is that I agree with their whole "acceptable adds" idea and I'm perfectly happy with adds if they aren't too annoying. But I wonder how many companies actually use that program?

Yeah. That's what I mean. People leave, they have no viewers anymore, everybody happy.

If you have uBlock, advanced mode can block the script that puts up the adwall. Just click off the allowance of 3rd party scripts for the page.

Thanks I'll try that one!

No problem here, using Chrome + Ublock Origin

Same story in comic form: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/bees_vs_hornets

There is a Nat Geo special called "Hornets from Hell" that shows video of the honey bee hug. It also gives some nightmare inducing close up footage of these things.

Signed a wasp phobic person

National Geo video on YT on same topic: https://youtu.be/2P7Q1ncgcoY

Sorta apropos: if you have not read The Bees give it a look, even if you're not one for fiction. This "group hug" is part of a key scene and other bee social behaviors make for a unique and fascinating novel. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FJ3CM7M

Can we just drop wired.com indefinitely?

people who subscribe to the site would complain. Why not create a per-user "exclude list"? If I don't want to see posts hosted on Wired.com, I just add the domain in this list...

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