What are Asian giant hornets?

Brut America

Asian giant hornets are upon us: here's what you need to know about them now that they've been spotted in the U.S.

Transcript

00:00A small group of hornets, like maybe a half a dozen, a dozen hornets, can wipe out

00:03a hive in an hour and a half to two hours, so they become really effective at killing the bees.

00:30At the end of their colony cycle, so this is like late summer, early fall, when they

00:44are ramping up production of the reproductives, of the new queens that will leave the nest

00:51and start new nests, they need a lot of protein sources, and so that's when they engage in

00:55this really interesting mass attack behavior on beehives.

01:00What will happen is a hornet will mark a hive, and then her sister workers will come, and

01:05then as a group they will just catch bees, bite their heads off, throw them onto the

01:09ground, and they'll do that until the bees are no longer able to mount any kind of defense.

01:14Once that happens, they enter what's called the occupation phase, and they walk around

01:18in the hive at will and take larvae and pupae of the bees, fly it back to their own nest,

01:23and feed it to their young.

01:24It's kind of gruesome sounding.

01:25In terms of trapping, we're using the technology that's been developed, that is most widely

01:55used in Japan, which is simply orange juice and wine blended together and hung in a plastic

01:59bottle.

02:00The hornets will come and investigate it, they get stuck in the bottle and drown.

02:03It's not dissimilar to the hornet traps you might see hanging at a park or something like

02:07that.

02:08We can't use those because the holes are too small.

02:11These hornets are too big.

02:12The other approach we have available are using handheld thermal imaging cameras to find nests

02:19in the ground.

02:20When they create their nest, they will maintain the internal temperature at 86 degrees Fahrenheit,

02:26so pretty warm, certainly warmer than our soil usually is.

02:29So we're hoping to be able to use these early in the morning to locate nests once we have

02:34an idea of where it might be.

02:55They've been intercepted at ports before.

02:56We actually got a couple off of a helicopter at Fort Lewis in a military base here in Washington

03:03that had come back from overseas.

03:05Those were dead.

03:06So we do intercept them at ports occasionally, but yeah, these, to my knowledge, are the

03:10first ones that have ever been hanging out in somebody's yard.

03:20So if you get stung by one, it hurts a lot.

03:24The Conrad, in fact, the beekeeper that destroyed the nest in Nanaimo, described it as having

03:29red-hot thumbtacks shoved into his skin.

03:33If you get stung, there's always the risk of anaphylactic shock.

03:35A subset of people are truly allergic to wasp stings or hornet stings, and so a single sting

03:42for somebody like that could be very life-threatening because of their allergic response.

03:46Otherwise, it seems like the most risky human hornet encounters are when somebody stumbles

03:53upon a nest or when they're protecting a, or around a beehive that the hornets have

03:58decided to attack.

04:00When they do that, they will defend it the same as they would their own nest.

04:03And that's where you're at risk just from getting multiple stings from very large venomous

04:06insects.

04:07The venom has necrotic characteristics that can make your tissue dissolve a little bit.

04:13It can cause heart and kidney problems.

04:26Don't call it a murder hornet.

04:27Remember that they're just Asian giant hornets.

04:30They're out doing their thing.

04:31They don't really care about human beings.

04:34It's only in the very unlucky instance that you encountered one that they might sting you.

04:39If you think you've seen one, call your state department of agriculture, ideally with a

04:44photograph because that will be really helpful for us.

04:47Even if it's a negative, even if you're not sure, that's okay because the first time we

04:52find a positive, we can really ramp up our activity at that location and have a better

04:55chance of eradicating them.

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