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Comment by kleton | Hacker News Reader

This is the Asian giant hornet. Apparently they had to make a euphemism that would obfuscate the continent of origin, when being from the wrong continent is precisely the reason it needed to be eradicated.

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It’s in contrast to vespa soror, the southern giant hornet, which inhabits more southern climates in Asia.

Both of them are giant hornet species from Asia so “Asian giant hornet” isn’t a unique descriptor.

It seems that the adoption of the southern/northern names was in part related to what GP is referring to.

https://entsoc.org/news/press-releases/northern-giant-hornet...

They could have gone with northern asian hornet, to follow proper taxonomy of including general and specific.

The only Asian country that is distinctly ‘northern’ is North Korea, and the media wouldn’t have shied away from using it in fear of people making the connection.

At the end of the day, the whole argument is stupid.

What? Japan, China, Russia, Mongolia?

I think they meant in terms of American cultural understanding, not latitude. I suspect most Americans don’t think of Russia as in Asia (despite the fact that it is) or Japan as being as far north as it actually is.

The premise that the USDA avoided calling this the Northern Asian Giant Hornet to avoid the implication that this came from North Korea seems quite absurd to me.

The premise was “Asian,” not “Northern Asian.” The latter appears to be speculation in this thread.

Huh? The North Korea confusion angle was raised to explain why they might not have called it the Northern Asian Giant Hornet to distinguish it from the Southern Asian variety. That's what I'm responding to, nested in the thread.

In a better world, it would be absurd. But America has quite a few no-excuse-is-too-weak xenophobes, who have a documented history of violence against random strangers, for the "crime" of looking "Asian".

That could explain why they don't want to call it Asian, but not why they would want to avoid an implication that it came from North Korea specifically.

I'm not paying close attention here, but the "because North Korea..." seems like a useful diversion, if your goals look like:

1 - Announce the seeming eradication of a dangerous invasive species

2 - While minimizing "any excuse" xenophobic human nastiness related to saying "Asian"

3 - And disguise your second goal, to minimize accusations of "pro-Asian Wokery" (or whatever phrase the nut jobs on that side of the culture wars are currently using) from your #2

4 - Also minimize left-wing backlash (I've no clue what phrases they'd use) to your #3 scheme

5 - ...

That’s not what I meant.

I’m poking holes in the ridiculous theory that they were holding back on using the word ‘Asian’.

But that "ridiculous theory" was part of the stated motivation of the person who authored the submission for the new name.

""" Furthermore, anti-Asian sentiment and hate crimes have risen during the COVID-19 pandemic, Looney notes, and labeling an invasive species perceived negatively as “Asian” can be harmful all around. """

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/murder-ho...

Same for Europe. I'd guess that most Americans would be surprised to find out that Paris, France is farther north than Seattle. If you slide Paris over to Washington it would be somewhere just south of the border with Canada.

If you slide it over to the east side of North America it would, appropriately, be in the Canadian province of Quebec.

Madrid, Spain is farther north than San Francisco or Denver. It's just half a degree south of New York.

It really shows how there is much more to climate than latitude. Most of Germany and all of the UK and Ireland are at latitudes that in North America put you well into "it is way too freaking cold here way too many days of the year!" territory, but thanks largely to the effects of currents in the Atlantic ocean they have much milder climates.

Yes, we learn this at geography at school here. The USA does not have barriers like mountains protecting it from North-South (since Rocky Mountains for example go North-South), whereas in Europe this is quite different in countries like the ones near the Mediterranean Sea. Also, the USA is of course simply quite large.

Japan isn't any farther north than the US. The northernmost island, Hokkaido, is indeed pretty far north (I think roughly the same latitude as Oregon, and also southern France), but most of the rest is quite a bit farther south. Tokyo (where most travelers visit, and 1/4-1/3 of the population lives) is I think roughly the same latitude as North Carolina, and is quite warm. Japan is nowhere near as far north as Alaska, if that's what you're thinking, and not even nearly as far north as much of Europe.

It’s like saying “Asian panda” or “South American giant anteater.” There’s no other place with giant hornets, so why would the name include it?

If anyone is wondering, the infamous “they” in this case is The Entomological Society of America, not the USDA or WSDA. You can read the press release here:

https://entsoc.org/news/press-releases/northern-giant-hornet...

Their guide to creating common names for insects is here: https://entsoc.org/publications/common-names/use-submission

There wasn't a common name for the multiple species before. The name change to distinguish the two species was done in 2020 to:

  - avoid the perceived unnecessary qualifier "Asian" 
  - avoid potential harmful negative perceptions being associated with "Asian"

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/murder-ho...

They are absolutely devastating to bee hives.

Honey bee hives, meanwhile, are destructive to native pollinators.

Water under the bridge. Nobody serious proposes the eradication of European honey bees in North America, nor cites them as a reason to not manage other invasive species.

The eradication of honey bees would create a crisis on the level of climate change. The amount of tech and labor needed to sustain such an eco system that bees simply do as a built-in part of life would unironically cost into the trillions of dollars.

There are hundreds of kinds of native solitary bees that pollinate in the wild. They would do better without competition from honey bees. More important is to have native plants and wild places for them.

Honey bees are livestock. They are important for pollinating crops and producing honey. But we shouldn't consider them important part of ecosystem.

In my yard, I planted native plants and got more bumblebees and other native bees which are hard to tell from flies.

If we really cared about this at all

We'd look at one map of the deforestation of the North America / United States since the arrival of the European colonization.

I think there'd be plenty of plants for all types of pollinators if we went back to such a a map.

We're not going back to that map, and meanwhile invasive livestock honey bees are in fact outcompeting our native pollinators.

>Honey bees are livestock. They are important for pollinating crops and producing honey. But we shouldn't consider them important part of ecosystem.

Europeans brought them over centuries ago. Just becsuse they weren't a natural part back then doesn't mean that closing the bottle won't have devastating after effects similar to what they did in the first place.

There's a point where an invasive species simply becomes the "natural" and I believe we crossed that line quite a whole ago. I'm not entirely sure that modern nature could sustain only on those solitary bees in the 21st century just becsuse it worked in the 14th century (you know, assuming we don't devastate nature anymore so than we've done the past century).

So, two things.

First, nobody is seriously proposing to outlaw or eliminate livestock honey bees. They're too valuable for agricultural service. Of course, thinking about what is good or not good for commercial bee colonies is a lot like thinking about what's good or not good for battery-farmed pigs; in fact: what's "good" in our natural ecology for livestock pigs has turned out to be a calamity across North America as feral pigs multiply uncontrollably. Either way: the bees aren't going anywhere. New stressors of bee colonies will simply raise costs for beekeepers.

Second, the idea that the extinction of feral honey bees would be "devastating" is directly falsifiable, because they have been eradicated from North America, in the recent past. The world did not end; in fact: you didn't even notice.

What you want to be paying attention to are our diverse native pollinators, including a variety of native bees. If you want to help our insect ecology, get some mason bee tubes. Unless you really like fresh honey, don't bother with the honey bees.

1. I'm aware. We'll see how they adjust to climate change, but all this was mostly a theoretical to emphasize how important their duties are. Despite the name they aren't just there to make sure our foods are sweet so I wanted to point that out. We'd have better luck going back to trying to eliminate mosquitoes over trying to eradicate honeybees.

2. www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/economy/struggling-beekeepers-stabilize-u-s-honeybee-population-after-nearly-half-of-colonies-died-last-year

I didn't "notice" because people who are experienced in this field went out of their way to correct this. I'll just say that I'm not a huge fan of this narrative "it isn't affecting my everyday so it clearly doesn't matter". That's how so many things slip down to a slope of "we'll fix it when it's too late".

>What you want to be paying attention to are our diverse native pollinators, including a variety of native bees

And you don't think a massive reduction of any one pollinator would have drastic effects just because you care about this "native" aspect? Again, these bees have been here for over 400 years. Where's the line?

I'll be honest and just say you're making a mountain out of a molehill here. I just wanted to pitch in that honeybees are important to the ecosystem and you're reacting as if I'm saying only honeybees matter. You as someone who understands the basics of such pollinators weren't necessarily my audience here. Those who think that bees just make honey and are a "luxury species because we don't need honey" were. And I hope that point got across to that audience.

I don't think it's true that you didn't notice because of a huge effort to fix the problem, because I don't think that effort happened. Again: honey bees are invasive in North America. Where there are feral honey bee colonies today, they trace to escapes from husbanded colonies. From the late 1980s until probably the 2010s, there were very few feral honey bees at all (and for some stretch of that, there were none).

I think you're thinking I'm calling back to the "colony collapse" scare of roughly ten years ago; I'm not. Here's a paper:

https://www.wellesu.com/https://doi.org/10.1093/ee/24.6.1473

Also worth noting: that paper establishes a history of honey bee introduction into America, and they have not in fact been here for 400 years (at least, according to that paper; I don't have a dog in this hunt, it wouldn't matter to me if they'd been here for longer).

Here's a fun paper from back in the day where they found honey bees in the Channel Islands off California, and immediately set to work eradicating them:

https://sbbotanicgarden.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Wenne...

Uh, not as I understand it. Feral honey bees have been functionally extinct in North America since the Varroa Destructor mite wiped them out in the 1980s and 1990s. The honey bees we see today are livestock, not wildlife.

(Extensive husbandry has probably [unfortunately, unintentionally] reestablished feral colonies in some states, but a few years ago it was apparently the case that any honey bee you saw in your yard probably had an owner, which is wild to think about.)

https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/2023/1/19/23552518/honey-b...

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