Hitching a ride in a shipment of bonsai pottery the Asian Hornet made its way to Bordeaux in 2004. It is now working its way across France and may be in Belgium soon. The problem? It loves to devour honey bees. It waits outside the hive and when a bee exits to go harvest honey the wasp pounces, rips off the head, discards everything but the thorax which it takes back to its nest. Asian honey bees have come up with a defense which is to surround the hornet and beat their wings to raise the temperature; the hornet dies at 45C but bees can last until 50C. Unfortunately this technique is very energy consuming and if the bees have to do it too often the hive dies of lack of supplies. The European bees haven't figured this defense out yet so hives are being wiped out.

A team of researchers at Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech (part of the University of Liège) have come up with a non-toxic, natural way of controlling aphid infestations. It seems that aphids produce a bacteria (Staphyloccocus sciuri) which attract its predators such as lady bugs and syrphid flies. When aphids eat they ingest too much sugar and therefore excrete honeydew. The bacteria consume the honeydew and liberate volatile compounds that attract the predators. The idea is to produce the volatile compounds and spray them on the plants the aphids favor. Not only do the adult syrphids eat aphids, their larvae eat up to 1,200 aphids each. The volatile compounds not only attract the syrphids, they also stimulate egg-laying.

Click here for an article from Nature Communications about this discovery.