Without some additional information, this is simply ill-informed and over-emotionalised rubbish. Of course, hornets, just like most other wasps, are predators on other insects. However, the reason why European honey bee colonies are so vulnerable to them is because they have no evolutionary adaption to Asian hornets.
Beekeepers in Japan attempted to introduce the European honeybee in order to increase productivity. European honeybees, however, have no defense against the hornet and the colonies are rapidly destroyed by these formidable insects.
The reason why this video is so distressing is because of the intimation of total injustice--the European honeybees have no defence at all. However, without our interference, this wouldn't have happened. Animal predation on other animals is cruel and often awful to watch, but it doesn't normally reach the extremes shown. This is just another example where we've upset the natural order. I don't mean to champion the natural order or predation, it's just that it's normally more balanced and doesn't permit this sort of thing.
It may well be that this information is contained somewhere in the original video, but it wasn't in this edit, and the implied sensationalism leads me to believe that the video-makers wouldn't have wanted to let on that we are to blame for introducing an alien species. But I'm happy to stand corrected if they did mention that.
Without some additional information, this is simply ill-informed and over-emotionalised rubbish. Of course, hornets, just like most other wasps, are predators on other insects. However, the reason why European honey bee colonies are so vulnerable to them is because they have no evolutionary adaption to Asian hornets.
Japanese bees do:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_giant_hornet#Native_honey_bees
There's a hornet in that ball, and it's had it.
The reason why this video is so distressing is because of the intimation of total injustice--the European honeybees have no defence at all. However, without our interference, this wouldn't have happened. Animal predation on other animals is cruel and often awful to watch, but it doesn't normally reach the extremes shown. This is just another example where we've upset the natural order. I don't mean to champion the natural order or predation, it's just that it's normally more balanced and doesn't permit this sort of thing.
It may well be that this information is contained somewhere in the original video, but it wasn't in this edit, and the implied sensationalism leads me to believe that the video-makers wouldn't have wanted to let on that we are to blame for introducing an alien species. But I'm happy to stand corrected if they did mention that.