‘Murder Hornets’ in the U.S.: The Rush to Stop
the Asian Giant Hornet
Sightings of the Asian giant hornet have prompted
fears that the vicious insect could establish itself in the United States and
devastate bee populations.
“This is
our window to keep it from establishing,” Chris Looney, a Washington State
entomologist, said of the two-inch Asian giant hornet. He displayed a dead
hornet on his jacket.
“This is
our window to keep it from establishing,” Chris Looney, a Washington State
entomologist, said of the two-inch Asian giant hornet. He displayed a dead
hornet on his jacket.Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
By Mike
Baker
Published
May 2, 2020
Updated May
6, 2020
BLAINE,
Wash. — In his decades of beekeeping, Ted McFall had never seen anything like
it.
As he
pulled his truck up to check on a group of hives near Custer, Wash., in
November, he could spot from the window a mess of bee carcasses on the ground.
As he looked closer, he saw a pile of dead members of the colony in front of a
hive and more carnage inside — thousands and thousands of bees with their heads
torn from their bodies and no sign of a culprit.
“I couldn’t wrap my head around what
could have done that,” Mr. McFall said.
Only later
did he come to suspect that the killer was what some researchers simply call
the “murder hornet.”
With queens
that can grow to two inches long, Asian giant hornets can use mandibles shaped
like spiked shark fins to wipe out a honeybee hive in a matter of hours,
decapitating the bees and flying away with the thoraxes to feed their young.
For larger targets, the hornet’s potent venom and stinger — long enough to
puncture a beekeeping suit — make for an excruciating combination that victims
have likened to hot metal driving into their skin.
In Japan,
the hornets kill up to 50 people a year. Now, for the first time, they have
arrived in the United States.
Mr. McFall
still is not certain that Asian giant hornets were responsible for the plunder
of his hive. But two of the predatory insects were discovered last fall in the
northwest corner of Washington State, a few miles north of his property — the
first sightings in the United States.
Scientists
have since embarked on a full-scale hunt for the hornets, worried that the
invaders could decimate bee populations in the United States and establish such
a deep presence that all hope for eradication could be lost.
MORE ON THE
ASIAN GIANT HORNET Japanese honeybees can swarm hornet invaders and cook them
alive
“This is our window to keep it from
establishing,” said Chris Looney, an entomologist at the Washington State
Department of Agriculture. “If we can’t do it in the next couple of years, it
probably can’t be done.”
On a cold
morning in early December, two and a half miles to the north of Mr. McFall’s
property, Jeff Kornelis stepped on his front porch with his terrier-mix dog. He
looked down to a jarring sight: “It was the biggest hornet I’d ever seen.”
The insect
was dead, and after inspecting it, Mr. Kornelis had a hunch that it might be an
Asian giant hornet. It did not make much sense, given his location in the
world, but he had seen an episode of the YouTube personality Coyote Peterson
getting a brutal sting from one of the hornets.
Beyond its
size, the hornet has a distinctive look, with a cartoonishly fierce face
featuring teardrop eyes like Spider-Man, orange and black stripes that extend
down its body like a tiger, and broad, wispy wings like a small dragonfly.
Mr.
Kornelis contacted the state, which came out to confirm that it was indeed an
Asian giant hornet. Soon after, they learned that a local beekeeper in the area
had also found one of the hornets.
Dr. Looney
said it was immediately clear that the state faced a serious problem, but with
only two insects in hand and winter coming on, it was nearly impossible to
determine how much the hornet had already made itself at home.
Over the
winter, state agriculture biologists and local beekeepers got to work,
preparing for the coming season. Ruthie Danielsen, a beekeeper who has helped
organize her peers to combat the hornet, unfurled a map across the hood of her
vehicle, noting the places across Whatcom County where beekeepers have placed
traps.
“Most people are scared to get stung
by them,” Ms. Danielsen said. “We’re scared that they are going to totally
destroy our hives.”
Adding to
the uncertainty — and mystery — were some other discoveries of the Asian giant
hornet across the border in Canada.
In
November, a single hornet was seen in White Rock, British Columbia, perhaps 10
miles away from the discoveries in Washington State — likely too far for the
hornets to be part of the same colony. Even earlier, there had been a hive
discovered on Vancouver Island, across a strait that probably was too wide for
a hornet to have crossed from the mainland.
Crews were
able to track down the hive on Vancouver Island. Conrad Bérubé, a beekeeper and
entomologist in the town of Nanaimo, was assigned to exterminate it.
He set out
at night, when the hornets would be in their nest. He put on shorts and thick
sweatpants, then his bee suit. He donned Kevlar braces on his ankles and
wrists.
But as he
approached the hive, he said, the rustling of the brush and the shine of his
flashlight awakened the colony. Before he had a chance to douse the nest with
carbon dioxide, he felt the first searing stabs in his leg — through the bee
suit and underlying sweatpants.
“It was like having red-hot
thumbtacks being driven into my flesh,” he said. He ended up getting stung at
least seven times, some of the stings drawing blood.
Jun-ichi
Takahashi, a researcher at Kyoto Sangyo University in Japan, said the species
had earned the “murder hornet” nickname there because its aggressive group
attacks can expose victims to doses of toxic venom equivalent to that of a
venomous snake; a series of stings can be fatal.
The night
he got stung, Mr. Bérubé still managed to eliminate the nest and collect
samples, but the next day, his legs were aching, as if he had the flu. Of the
thousands of times he has been stung in his lifetime of work, he said, the
Asian giant hornet stings were the most painful.
After
collecting the hornet in the Blaine area, state officials took off part of a
leg and shipped it to an expert in Japan. A sample from the Nanaimo nest was
sent as well.
A genetic
examination, concluded over the past few weeks, determined that the nest in
Nanaimo and the hornet near Blaine were not connected, said Telissa Wilson, a
state pest biologist, meaning there had probably been at least two different
introductions in the region.
Dr. Looney
went out on a recent day in Blaine, carrying clear jugs that had been made into
makeshift traps; typical wasp and bee traps available for purchase have holes
too small for the Asian giant hornet. He filled some with orange juice mixed
with rice wine, others had kefir mixed with water, and a third batch was filled
with some experimental lures — all with the hope of catching a queen emerging
to look for a place to build a nest.
He hung
them from trees, geo-tagging each location with his phone.
In a region
with extensive wooded habitats for hornets to establish homes, the task of
finding and eliminating them is daunting. How to find dens that may be hidden
underground? And where to look, given that one of the queens can fly many miles
a day, at speeds of up to 20 miles per hour?
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