‘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.
‘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.Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
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.
“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.”
Image
The members of Ted McFall’s beehive near Custer, Wash., had their heads torn from their bodies. Credit...Ted McFall
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.”
Image
Ruthie Danielsen noted the places across Whatcom County where beekeepers have placed hornet traps.Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
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.
Image
Beehives at Ms. Danielsen’s home in Birch Bay.Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
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?
Image
The entomologist Chris Looney setting makeshift traps for the hornet in an industrial park in Blaine.Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
The
miles of wooded landscapes and mild, wet climate of western Washington
State makes for an ideal location for the hornets to spread.
In
the coming months, Mr. Looney said, he and others plan to place
hundreds more traps. State officials have mapped out the plan in a grid,
starting in Blaine and moving outward.
The
buzz of activity inside a nest of Asian giant hornets can keep the
inside temperature up to 86 degrees, so the trackers are also exploring
using thermal imaging to examine the forest floors. Later, they may also
try other advanced tools that could track the signature hum the hornets
make in flight.
If
a hornet does get caught in a trap, Dr. Looney said, there are plans to
possibly use radio-frequency identification tags to monitor where it
goes — or simply attach a small streamer and then follow the hornet as
it returns to its nest.
While
most bees would be unable to fly with a disruptive marker attached,
that is not the case with the Asian giant hornet. It is big enough to
handle the extra load.
Image
A dead Asian giant hornet.Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 22 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘Murder Hornets’ Sighted in U.S. and Scientists Are on the Hunt. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
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