Sung Won's Articles

This year, I started to write articles for my school's paper, the Circle Voice. I wrote three this year, and here they are.

If you want to download the articles and read them, click the following links. If not, they are on this page.

Article 1

Article 2

Article 3

Article 4

The Pests of Pest House Declare War on Amos’ Dorm!

In recent weeks, some of the residents of Amos dorm have noticed a number of wasps in their rooms. It seems that these wasps, especially the ones in my room, have declared war on the dorm. In the first month of school, my roommate and I encountered a record number of over one hundred and twenty wasps in our room. The wasps that invaded my room, however, could not have chosen a worse place. Next to the Annex, my room probably has more gears to kill insects than any other place on campus. Those wasps invading my room are like…me challenging Dr. Suz in squash. The similarity? The degree at which the wasps and I are slaughtered. Dr. Suz and I crushed them, batted them, pinned them, burnt them (nothing illegal Mr. Beams! We just used solar energy), squashed them, put them in jars with poisonous gas, and… tortured them; we basically did everything you would ever want to do to those annoying wasps that invaded your room, except selling them as slaves to our neighboring dorms (although they would be very efficient at guarding your room and your belongings…). After observing the enemy carcasses closely, we discovered that the wasps might be of two different species, and the idea that we might now have TWO hives declaring war on us excited us quite a bit (well it excited me… Dr. Suz…not really). We got ready for war, with our nets, kill jars, metal rods, cardboard tubes, and pinning needles. After a few weeks of many brutal battles, a new report of infiltration from Sir Knight and Sir Swansburg reached us: ‘wasps have invaded our haven, please come and save us’. First, I sent the first line of offense, Dr. Suz, now promoted to Captain Southmayd. He, however, requested back-up, saying that the new enemies were tougher and more vicious. Thus, the heavy artilleries were taken out, and I headed over to the battlefield. After many swatting, swishing, and hollering, we had the three wasps in a kill jar, and I discovered that the Captain had been right. These wasps were different from the ones we had in our room, and furthermore, one of them was of a different species than the other two! So…we confirmed that there were at least three species of wasps challenging our dorm.

You have to know your enemies if you want to win the battle, right? Well, I decided to track the enemies down to their species so that I might know their habits and think of ways to reinforce our defenses. After many hours of toil, I found that they were European Yellowjackets (Vespula germanica), Eastern Yellowjackets (Vespula maculifrons), and the native paper wasps of northeastern North America (Polistes fuscatus). I had been correct in my assumption that knowing the enemy DOES help: I found out the reason for the frequent visits from the Yellowjackets, both Eastern and European. Near the end of the summer, their beautiful and productive queens die (these queens lay hundreds of eggs a day….try beating that!). There are no more larvae to feed….so what do the worker wasps do? They get busy feeding….THEMSELVES. Unlike my roommate, who has allegedly not eaten artificial sugar in the last few weeks, these wasps love sugar, and they would often venture into human dwellings in search of those precious crystals. The paper wasps that were caught in the haven of Sir Swansburg and Sir Knight generally do not like to visit people, so they must have gotten lost and wandered into the place, especially since there were no more after that incident. Well, these Yellowjackets had to be taken care of somehow. I knew that as winter approached, all the Yellowjackets would die, except for the newly hatched queens. However, Captain was on the verge of breaking down under the barrage of attacks, so we devised a way to defend our fortress. First, I sealed away all my sweets in hopes that the wasps would be lazy like I am and stop visiting us once there was no more profit. Unfortunately, these wasps were accustomed to toiling because that’s what they had been doing their whole life, and they refused to stop even though they weren’t getting anything. After a few more days of continuous invasions, I finally sealed up the windows with masking tape, and although a few still got in, the number of visits more than halved.

A few final words for your safety. By this time of the year, the low temperature has killed most of the Yellowjackets, except for the queens who will hibernate and create a new colony next year. Next year however, there are no guarantees that one of you isn’t going to be the unfortunate target of these wasps. If you WERE to find a wasp in your room, DON’T do what I did, okay? I crushed them, batted them, and what not, but that isn’t wise for people who do not have proper training and equipments, like I do. ESPECIALLY, if you are allergic to wasps, which I also am. Either try to capture them in some kind of a jar or cup, or lure them outside. Yellowjackets have this interesting thing called pheromone that they release either when they sting you or when they get crushed. And guess what pheromone does? Yep, your worst nightmare. It alerts MORE of those darn wasps. That might explain why the wasps continued to attack us even when there were no more sweets for them. Wouldn’t you go attack someone’s house if your family member was killed there?

Oh, I hear someone calling me to catch a bug in his room…If you ever need any bugs to be taken care of, you know who to call, right?

Ghosts in the schoolhouse!!! Oh…they are just Halloween Ladybugs!

Every year around Halloween, the schoolhouse is filled with flitting, red-orange insects. Though their numbers have decreased slightly over the years, they continue to accompany our classrooms along with some ghosts. They are everywhere: on the ceilings, on windows, on the lights…sometimes even on the desks! People wonder what they are doing inside and not hunting in the luscious fields just outside the windows. Have these beetles been brainwashed by their lives at Groton that they are so desperate to study? Or maybe, they are studying human behavior so that they can fulfill their ambition to take over the world and make us their slaves. I couldn’t just sit there and let these little beetles take over our schoolhouse, so I started doing some research on them.

These ladybugs are commonly called Halloween Ladybugs because they appear around the time of Halloween. Their proper common name is Multicolored Asian Lady Beetle while their Latin name is Harmonia axyridis. The fact that these beetles have different colors within the same species has given them the title Multicolored beetles. People may wonder how it is possible then, to figure out which ones are Harmonia axyridis and which ones are of other species. The easiest method to tell a member of Harmonia axyridis from say, a Cycloneda, C. munda, which can look similar without spots, would be to look at the top of their protonum, which are right behind the head. The Harmonia axyridis will have a white M-shaped mark there.

Like most other ladybugs, the Harmonia axyridis mainly feeds on aphids and other hemipterans. As their common name implies, the beetles are not native to North America. There were numerous attempts in the past to introduce the species to North America in order to control agricultural pests, such as aphids. Unfortunately, the first few attempts were a failure and the aphid population continued to pose a threat to American agriculture. The United States Department of Agriculture finally decided that it was time to show the aphids who was the boss…and they brought in the axyridis again from China. It seemed that this was again a failure, but in a few years, it was evident that the axyridis had survived and were flourishing. Nowadays, they are common northern and eastern US.

The axyridis have not been completely helpful, however. They could be considered as pests because they contaminate grapes and overwhelm the native ladybug population in some areas. They also have a habit of entering human dwellings. They aren’t satisfied with their own houses, so they just enter our houses and dwell… WITHOUT PAYING RENT!!

So...why DO these beetles enter our buildings? It is rumored that some axyridis bite people, perhaps to consume salt off our skin. Pretty strange, eh? But I am pretty sure that they have better places to go for salt…heck, they could just go to the dining hall, crawl across the floor and find a load of salt from all the salt that people spill. So, guess that can be discarded. Are they really then, planning to study humans and take over the world? They do have bites that cause allergic reaction in some people. Who knows? Maybe our new president Obama is allergic and the beetles will hold him hostage. Still….quite unlikely.

The simplest and the most reasonable explanation is given by…natural desire. When it’s snowing and freezing outside, would you rather sleep on the circle or in your room? Unless you are crazy and resistance to cold, you probably like being warm. Same with the poor ladybugs. They are even more susceptible to cold than we are because they rely on outside temperature to warm their bodies. The answer is simple; the ladybugs enter our dwellings to share our warmth and hide from the cold. They shelter themselves inside walls when possible or in any kind of sheltered place inside houses to overwinter. Ladybugs are pretty cool though, so hopefully, people at Groton won’t have any trouble with having them in the same building...As a classmate of mine once said, “Spiders are gross, but ladybugs are cute!”

The sun is shining…clouds are sparsely scattered along the sky…you are enjoying the radiant warmth…smiling at the sun…and then ZZZOOOOOOOMMM!!! It flashes by you, and you fall back on your butt. You think to yourself, “Holy cow, what the heck was that??” But it’s already gone….all you remember seeing is a fat, black streak, and you wonder what it was.

As the weather warms up on the beautiful campus of Groton, various arthropods have aroused themselves from their slumbers; some overwintered as adults, some as larvae, and some as eggs. Flowers begin to spring up, and what do these flowers do? Attract pollinators, of course. Of the numerous species of pollinators that thrive on campus, the fat, black streaks that seem too big to be honeybees or wasps are the Bombus impatiens, the common eastern bumblebees.

This species of bumblebees are probably larger than most bees that you have seen in your life. They are about 2.5cm long (0.99in), compared to most other honeybees, which are less than 1.5cm (0.59in). Despite their large size, however, the B. impatiens function in a similar way to other social bees; they live in colonies, their lives center around a queen, and they collect nectar…oh, and they can sting too, in case you were wondering. One major difference between bumblebees, including B. impatiens, and wasps is the fact that bumblebees use pollen as a source of protein for their larva, while wasps hunt other arthropods for protein.

The easiest way to identify the B. impatiens is their size and their lack of stripes on their abdomen after the first yellow stripe. They are most often found in flower beds, flowers on trees, or on the grass fields. Like all hymenoptera, they have two pairs of wings, with hooks connecting the front and hind wings, and the worker bees, which are all females, have stingers capable of dealing painful stings. They won’t really sting you unless you provoke them, which I often do…I must say, they are tough to kill, and it takes forever for them to “go to sleep” after I capture them.

In the hives, the B. impatiens’s lives are similar to other social bees. The queen is a very large, overgrown female that lays thousands of eggs a day while various maids wait on her. Yup, this queen has a better life than any human royalties. All she has to do is lay little eggs, and she is continuously fed, cooled, and cleaned until the day she dies. Jealous? You should be…who else has such a luxurious life?

Then, there are the larvae, the babies of the hive. After the queen lays the eggs, some of the worker bees take them and put each one into separate cells in the hive, in preparation for their hatching. When they do hatch, the workers feed them pollen and nectar, and the nourished larvae go through four instars (growth stages). After their last instar, they forge a cocoon for themselves and then emerge as adult bees a while later. Most of them end up being female worker bees, incapable of sexual activity. They slave away until Death claims them in various methods, including, but not limited to, ending up in my box with a pin through their bodies…

Finally, there are the drones, which also don’t really do anything useful in the colony and have really sad lives. They spend their time leeching off the hive’s food and enjoying luxurious lives that the female drones provide. When a new queen emerges, the drones court her to see if they can mate with her. After they mate with her, the drones that succeeded in mating with her die. Sad, isn’t it? They live their whole lives for the sole purpose of “hooking up” with a queen…that’s pretty sad. Oh well, I guess love is a risky business for these furry creatures…more so than it is for male Homo sapiens.

Now you know what those fat, black streaks are if you see them again! Just be careful not to provoke them…they can sting multiple times, unlike honeybees…not very pleasant.