Thanks to the help of everyday people, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Washington state’s agriculture agency declared victory — murder hornets have been wiped out.
The giant hornets can be up to two inches long, have a dangerous sting and can destroy a honey bee hive in hours, The Associated Press reported.
While called murder hornets their real name is Vespa mandarinia, the Asian giant hornet or the northern giant hornet, The New York Times reported.
They first made headlines when they killed 42 people in China in 2013. The insects hurt another 1,675 people. They were initially found in British Columbia in August 2019 and in the U.S. by December of that year. A person in Whatcom County found one, and then a beekeeper said hives were attacked the next year. Experts believe the hornets go to North America in plant pots or shipping containers.
The hornets decapitate the bees and take over the hive to raise their young, using the surviving bees as food for their offspring. The hornets can sting through a beekeeper’s suit with seven times the amount of venom as a bee. Unlike bees, they can sting several times, the AP reported.
A person who was stung said it felt “like having red-hot thumbtacks being driven into my flesh,” The New York Times reported. Too many stings can be deadly.
However, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Washington state agriculture agency said there have been no detections of the giant insect since 2021 in the U.S. The Invasive Species Centre in Canada said there haven’t been sightings of the hornet in British Columbia since 2021 either.
They attribute the success partially to people who allowed traps on their properties and who reported sightings of the hornets. Researchers also captured a live hornet and tied a radio tracking tag to it with dental floss to be able to find its nest.
Researchers then tracked it to an alder tree, destroying the nest, using vacuums and carbon dioxide to kill the insects, The New York Times reported.
In all, four nests were found in 2020 and 2021 with the only confirmed reports of them in Washington, the AP reported.
“I’ve gotta tell you, as an entomologist — I’ve been doing this for over 25 years now, and it is a rare day when the humans actually get to win one against the insects,” Sven Spichiger said, according to the AP. He is the Washington State Department of Agriculture pest program manager.
Despite being declared eradicated, the state will continue to monitor traps looking for the giant hornet, Spichiger said, according to the AP. There are still reports of giant hornets being made but none of them have been murder hornets. They are similar insects such as cicada killers, yellow jackets or sawflies, the Times reported.
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