- Following reports of Asian giant hornets — native to China, Korea, and Japan — making landfall in the US for the first time, people began to fear the possibility of an invasion of the nearly two-inch long hornet.
- Nicknamed the "murder hornet," the
Asian giant hornet has the ability to decapitatehoneybees and kill humans with its venom. - However, entomologists told Business Insider that reports of a "murder hornet" takeover in the US are overblown.
- "It's not an existential threat to mankind or to the US or to our honeybee industry to have,"
entomologist Doug Yanega told Business Insider. "Even if they do get established and build a foothold here, the scale of the threat is greatly overblown." - Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
A two-inch "murder hornet" with the ability to decapitate honeybees and kill humans with their venom is sure to induce fear and alarm.
So when reports emerged of the Asian giant hornet — native to parts of China, Korea, and Japan — making landfall for the first time in the US, it incited panic across social media.
This hornet — the world's largest — can grow up to two inches long in length, and features a distinctive black tooth used for burrowing and its stinger is filled with venom that, in extreme cases, can kill a human.
While the concern over the invasive species is warranted, entomologists believe that the panic regarding the likelihood of the species invading North America is not.
In September of last year, Doug Yanega, a senior scientist at the UC Riverside
Three months later, a resident in Blaine,
Anne LeBrun, National Policy Manager for Honeybee and Pollinator Pest Programs in the US Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), said the department confirmed one identification of the Asian giant hornet specimen and is working with the "Washington Department of Agriculture (WSDA) to determine how far this pest has spread."
The WSDA analyzed the dead hornet and found it was not a genetic match to the eradicated nest in Nanaimo, suggesting another nest exists within a 50-mile radius.
The APHIS has contributed over $400,000 in the 2020 fiscal year to support exotic hornet research and prevent the Asian giant hornet from establishing itself in the US.
The second hornet nor its nest were found, prompting local authorities to ask residents to keep their eyes peeled for any more hornet sightings.
"They decided that it was important to let the public know and make sure that none of them show up this year, because if we go a year without them showing up, then we know we're pretty much in the clear," Yanega told Business Insider.
"It really only pertains to the immediate vicinity of Vancouver Island and the adjacent parts of Washington, which are places like Blaine, maybe, in a worst-case scenario, as far as South Bellingham, which is still the extreme northwest corner of the US," Yanega continued.
Yanega said it's 'just human psychology' that prompted the viral internet fame of the Asian giant hornet.
The Washington State Department of Agriculture needed to get the information out to "get the public to help them monitor the situation," he said.
"I think what made it worse was just the way that The New York Times article was written and the sensationalist, '
With the unlikelihood of coming across a giant hornet in person, the entomologist said more commonplace insects in the US have much more of a deadly consequence, including yellow jackets and mosquitoes.
"People assume that it's bees that are the most dangerous, and they're just stinging insects," he continued.
Because of the hornet's massive size, they "take a lot of food to survive," Yanega said.
"There's not really an awful lot that's out there for them to feed on except for honeybees," he said, so he cautioned local Washington beekeepers to keep watch on their bee yards for any hornet attacks.
"If that doesn't happen, well, number one, that's a good thing in the general sense, and number two, those wasps are going to starve even if they're out there," he said. "There's just not enough other big insects for them to feed on to propagate a colony."
Yanega said he hopes to dispel the fears of an Asian giant hornet invasion quickly before people begin to kill insects resembling the hornet out of fear, saying "that's all we need for people to go around killing more of our native wildlife at a time when a lot of those things are threatened with extirpation as is."
"It's not an existential threat to mankind or to the US or to our honeybee industry to have," he said. "Even if they do get established and build a foothold here, the scale of the threat is greatly overblown."
James Carpenter, an entomologist at the American Natural History Museum, said that reports that the hornet has killed dozens of people in recent years are "complete nonsense."
"The media hysteria certainly isn't warranted," Carpenter told Business Insider. "The wasps are a concern, but they're a concern for the bee-keeping industry."
"If you don't bother their nest, they aren't likely to bother you," he added. "It's just because they're so big that people are freaking out."
It's still unclear where the hornets came from, though they may have made their way on cargo ships.
Several experts that Business Insider spoke to said the Asian giant hornets may have arrived in North America by cargo.
"There may have been, say, a cargo container that arrived in the port there in Vancouver at some point last year, and it had multiple individuals of this wasp on board. And they left the cargo container and dispersed," Yanega surmised as to the origin of the Washington state hornet sighting.
In September 2019, the Invasive Species Council of British Columbia, Canada, reported that three Asian giant hornets were found for the first time on Vancouver Island in August. The council encouraged residents to report additional sightings of the hornets and said it was not known how the species ended up in North America, though it estimated that it was possible they were "transported with personal or commercial goods."
Research co-authored by Allan Smith-Pardo, a biological scientist with the AHPIS, pointed out that the species has been intercepted at US ports of entry within the last decade. According to the research, which has been accepted for publication and was seen in advance by Business Insider, there have been close to 50 interceptions of hornets and yellow jackets at US ports of entry between 2010 and 2018.
The research paper noted that an entire nest of live Asian giant hornets that was sent via express courier from Asia was intercepted at a port of entry, though the research did not specify when the incident happened.
"You would think people would know better than sending gigantic, dangerous, venomous insects alive that way," Yanega, who was not part of the research, told Business Insider. "That verges on bioterrorism if people are sending live colonies of hornets around the world."
Carpenter, who co-authored the research with Smith-Pardo, told Business Insider that a deliberate shipment of invasive hornets into North America could allow them to propagate. He did not know specifically when the shipment of the Asian giant hornet was detected in the US.
"If [Asian giant hornets] are brought in 'deliberately' that could happen," he said, but he dispelled the theory that the hornets were part of a deliberate bio-attack on the US, saying that the species has been widely used in Eastern medicine.
"Considering the use of that species in medicine and as food in East Asia, the threat [of propagation] will be repeated," he explained.
Carpenter said he was not aware of any cases of Asian giant hornet sightings beyond the most recent sighting in Blaine, Washington, last year. He said that as part of his research, he has found that Asian giant hornets, along with other invasive species, have been spotted in other parts of the world, but, in most cases, "they have not become established."
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