What's interesting is the way that honey bees defend against them. A bunch of bees surround each hornet, then they intensify the flapping of their wings, which then generates enough heat to kill the hornet. In other words, the hornets are cooked alive.
European honeybees, which are used in most of the world, have no such defense mechanism and would indeed be helplessly slaughtered by these hornets.
I’d definitely advocate watching some YouTube footage about these creatures, they’re fascinating.
A fuckup led to the release of several of swarms of african bees which went on to crossbreed with local european honeybees, so africanised honeybees were not actually a human creation.
The result turned out to mostly take from their african ancestry: highly defensive, fast reproduction, readily swarming (or even absconding), way less picky about their nesting sites, … leading to high invasiveness.
AFAIK africanised honeybees are no worse than their african ancestors (though I'm not sure they're any better).
When I first heard about the hornet defense I wondered how on Earth the bees could've come up with that. But if they already clumped up for warmth it's a lot more scrutable.
The honeybees don’t just swarm the hornets, they will actually retreat into the hive and allow the hornets to enter, then trap them inside while they roast them to death. All of this works because the honeybees can vibrate themselves to a temperature just warmer than the hornets can tolerate, which is also just less than the bees can tolerate. Just one or two degrees celsius of tolerance is the difference.
Hopefully no Asian giant hornets ever evolve a slightly higher temperature tolerance!