Crazy Raspberry ants on the march. Flamethrowers, anyone?

"A destructive menace is heading west on Interstate 10 toward San Antonio.
It's the crazy Raspberry ant that was first spotted in Houston in 2002. No one knows where it came from or how to control it, but it reproduces faster than any insect experts have ever seen.
"This is an alien species," says Sam Houston State University Entomologist Dr. Jerry Cook. "This is in higher densities than any other insects I've ever seen. They number in the billions and cover everything around them."
"Where you'll have 200,000 ants in a big fire ant mound, you'll have billions of crazy ants in one area, in that one group. They form a carpet of ants over acres that is several inches thick."
"It's a potential ecological disaster, displacing everything in front of it, other insects. Some people think getting rid of insects is good but it's not good for the environment. Insects play a vital role. When you destroy insects, you destroy the food for birds and other animals that depend on these insect populations. It could affect our food supply, reducing the crop yield by 30 to 40 percent." "

LINK

Hey, lawn daddies, there's a new kudzu in town. Look out for this stuff in the south.

"One of the world's worst weeds is thriving in the southern summer and it's not kudzu. It's called cogongrass. The invasive weed has already infested about a million acres in the southeast and continues to spread....If the grass is not contained, experts say the weed could eventually turn the southeast into a grassy savanna devoid of all native species. "

LINK to story

Super-invasive whitefly works with plant viruses to decimate crops.

Xinhua has the coolest news.
"Scientists in China have discovered a rapidly spreading crop pest and a virus have joined forces to enhance both their invasions worldwide.
A variety of the whitefly Bemisia tabaci known as the B biotype is "a super-invasive organism," Shu-Sheng Liu, an entomologist at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, explained Wednesday.
During the past 20 years, the B whitefly has spread rapidly around the world causing hundreds of millions of dollars in crop losses. Outbreaks of the B whitefly have often been followed by pandemics of a group of plant viruses, called begomoviruses, that the whiteflies carry. " LINK

Killer Bees in New Orleans!

(No, not a B bee disaster movie- although it would probably make a pretty good one. My own personal favorite bee related B movie was actually called Killer Bees, (the 2002 one), and a truck containing the deadly africanized strain of bees crashes right before the Honey Festival (totally serious- this movie is great.)

Real Africanized bees turned up in an abandoned structure in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana. Creeeepy. LINK