Archive for the ‘Insects’ Category

Moving this hive to a safer location with no proper attire on. Using bare hands.

The Red Fire Ant or the RIFA

A reddish brown colored ant that was brought into our country from South America. There are 6 different types of fire ants living in the United States that we are aware of. 3 of the species are located in Arizona. The ones in Arizona are called the southern fire ant and the other two species are referred to as desert fire ants. The are refereed to in shorts as the, RIFA. The RIFA are found along the states that border the states, New Mexico and California. At one time, they found one close to Yuma, Arizona but it was quickly killed.

Pesky sting that burns really bad

The RIFA is a small ant but very aggressive. Their sting injects a fluid that is very painful and itches. In some people a rash develops in the sting area that requires medical treatment. Of the 5 million people stung yearly in the US, as many as 25,000 require medical care. If you run across a RIFA mound, and disturb it in any way, you will be under attack. The worker RIFA will immediately start flowing out of the mound attacking anything in their way. They will climb up your body pinching the skin and stinging you each time you move. Not just one sting happens at a time, there are possibly hundreds of the RIFA workers and they all work together stinging you over and over again. Being stung can cause health problems for people.

Incredibly strong

The fire ant is able to carry loads that weigh 10 times more than their own weight. That is like an average human male lifting a one ton truck. They are also very organized and hard workers. Now you would think that would mean they are male ants, but no, they are females. All worker ants are females. They are very good at team work. They are a good example of a productive form of teamwork we could all learn from.

This is amazing. I never thought you could help out a butterfly that has had it’s wing broke off.

Amazing how they look like a bug right after birth.

A Black Widow and A Recluse spider on his ungloved hands!

Out of a Horror Movie

It’s like a story out of a horror movie. The ants have immense heads and jaws. This is the type of ant you would find invading homes and completely divouring everything in sight on a horror movie. The scariest part about all of this is that scientist created these goliath ants. Why they would try to create monsters, I don’t know. They accomplished this by triggering some ancient genes the ants carry. Put this ant next to a typical sized red ant and they are absolutely huge. I would not want to comes across a nest of them out in my yard which is full of ant hills. The scientist believe that these huge ants may possibly be connected by genes to an ancestor that roamed the earth millons of years ago.

The Super Soldiers

Since these ants are workers of the nest, they are being referred to as super soldiers by the scientisits. It is rather  simple for the scientist to take a typical worker ant and create a monster soldier ant. All they need to do is add a little dab of the hormone on the larvae. Once the ant is developed, it is of a monster size,  a soldier ant.

Where do you find these ants?

I am so happy it didn’t list the mid eastern states as a location that these ants can be found. Typically you will find them in the desert area of the United States or Mexico. These ants are required to patrol and protect the ant hill from outside threats. The scientists also point out, that even though it required them to alter the genes of a worker ant to achieve the super soldier, that the same results could happen out in the wild. It is a rare occurence, but it is possible.

You thought the horror stories would be over once Halloween had passed but this horror story is one that will go on an on. A moth that sucks blood out of it’s victims. This moth was offered human hands in an experiment to see what they would do. The moth poked through the people’s skin on their hands to get to the blood which they sucked up as vampires do. These vampire moths were not heard of before this but are now being seen in Siberia. It is possible they are a variation that has sprung up from the moths that eat fruit.

The wings of these vampire moths in Russia do show just a little difference from the moth, Calyptra thalictri, which is a moth that lives in the central and southern parts of Europe and eats only fruit as far as we know.

Is it possible that fruit eating moths are evolving into vampires? Are we going to have to be aware of the possibility of being bitten by not only mosquito’s as we sit around the campfires in the summer but also vampire moths?

There have been two different groups of these vampire moths discovered since January 2006. The first time they found one, it was in Russia. This time Siberia. An Entomologist, Jennifer Zaspel located at the University of Florida is going to compare the Russian moth’s DNA with other types of moths to see if it’s possible that the moth’s could be going through an evolutionary trajectory. Looking at the behavior, the location, and the wing pattern on these moths, there is something new happening.

She states, “But it is really difficult to say without knowing genetic differences between individuals in that population, and among individuals from other populations, how different this group is going to be.”

The next vampire movie won’t be about bats, it will now be the moths.

They are hairy, they bite and they are showing up in the southern parts of the US. The tiny flea size ant has a awful bite. They are arriving in large groups and are extremely fast. The ants most likely were originally from South America but they are arriving in the US setting up housekeeping from Texas to Florida.

The ants enter the area inside of cargo carrying containers such as hay bales, plants in pots, motorcycles, and inside moving vans. Ants that don’t even belong in the US now number in the millions.

Along with there being so many is they are not easy to kill. When one dies, it can release a chemical that alert the whole nest to it’s demise. This can bring the whole nest of ants down on the person or animal that may have killed it.

This story goes along with Halloween, ‘The Invasion of the Hairy Ant.’ It can seem a bit humorous but it’s not. The ants are entering the northern parts of the country as the temperatures are staying a bit more tropical. That is one good thing about having a severely cold winter. It does kill out the unwanted insects like hairy ants.

So far the ones most affected by the ants are the industrial plants. The ants are eating out parts of the equipment to make their nest. They travel through the equipment making trails and leaving the equipment inoperable.

So here we have it, ants that pack a big bite, and fast moving even though they are tiny. You can’t hardly kill them because if you do, you will be attacked by the rest of their colony. They are very scary tiny insects and growing in numbers at a fast pace.

Nothing more do I fear than spiders. I know most are small and are no danger to me, but they really give me the creeps when I see one. This nest of baby spiders is no different. It’s good the nest was located outside and not inside the house. That isn’t quite so bad. The nest is tiny and just a touch to it sends the mass of infant spiders into a frenzy. It is amazing even to a person who is frightened to death of spiders how they all span out within a short distance when the nest is disturbed, but return to their safe little bundle once they are over their own scare. I must say I was fascinated with watching them while at the same time my nerves were on edge.

Even though I am not a fan of spiders, I don’t kill them unless it is a giant one in my house. Even then I try to catch it in a jar and take it outside. I know every critter on the earth was put here for some reason. Spiders do good at keeping some of our nuisance insects at bay. I was rather upset the other day when seeing a praying mantis that appeared to be in a spiders web. After looking a bit closer, I found it to be actually under the web. The spider took one look at it and went into hiding. Later, I didn’t see the praying mantis or the spider. I have my own theory as to what happened.

Spiders eat mosquitoes which are a very pesty insect and I really feel they have no need here on our planet other than to feed spiders. The web of a spider can be beautiful except when I walk through one in the dark. Now that really scares the heck out of me as I imagine the spider being right there ready to pounce on me and bite.

I hope you don’t suffer from arachnophobia as I think maybe I do.  If you do, then all this is sure to send shivers through your being.

Latest Honeybee Massacre has killed up to 12 million bees in Florida

Up to 12 million honeybees have suddenly been found dead across Florida, hitting many local bee keepers hard. Some have lost up to $150,000 worth of bees and up to 80% of their bee colony to a mysterious cause. Up to 800 hives on 30 sites within a 1.5 mile radius have been affected.

Regardless of where you live, whether it’s Florida, another U.S. state or another country – we all depend on honeybees, perhaps much more than a lot of people are aware of. Albert Einstein once said, “If honey bees became extinct, human society would follow within four years.” Honeybees are an integral part of life on Earth and without them it would cost us billions of dollars to manually pollinate all our crops. Honeybees are one of the most effective pollinators, so anything that affects them this severely is troubling to many.

Dennis van Engelsdorp of the College of Agricultural Sciences at Penn State stated that “One in three bites of the food we eat comes from or depends on plants which have been insect pollinated.”

The decline of honeybees has been happening for years and the honeybee massacre in Florida is just the latest blow. Scientists are struggling to find a single cause that could wipe out this many honeybees at once. Some suggested that the honeybees have been poisoned by pesticides used on cultivated land, others suggested that the massacre could be the result of a “colony collapse disorder”.

Colony collapse disorder has since been ruled out because the effects are normally gradual and the honeybees would normally have left the hive before dying. With something so widespread, so rapid and affecting all members of the honeybee colony, disease has also been ruled out. So far, the likeliest cause seems to be pesticide poisoning, which experts are currently testing for.