Murder Hornets
I’ve been thinking about murder hornets or The Asian Giant Hornet as it is officially known.
When the freaky new ‘Monkey Pox’ was announced recently I thought to myself, “ But what happened to the murder hornets that were supposed to ‘get us’?
So I did a little bit of research to find out.
Their scientific name is Vespa Mandarinia and they appear to be about 2 inches long with a wingspan about 2 1/2 inches. Yikes!
They are a fierce predator in the insect world and the normally hail from China, Japan, Thailand, South Korea, Vietnam and other countries in Asia. They have killed people in Asia and thus the term “Murder Hornets”.
That said, even though I assumed that the largest hornet in the world was now coming to get us in North America….. they actually are more of a terrible danger to the honey bee population.
The first murder hornet nest was found near the B.C. / U.S. border in 2019.
After receiving the coordinates about where the hornets might be found, John and Moufida Holubeshen did indeed find the nest in a park in Nanaimo and decided to destroy it.
John and his wife are beekeepers in Nanaimo, B.C. and he was stung when he found the nest. He felt like he was ‘hit by a 2x4’ he said and his wife, Moufida, was yelling at him to get out of there because once they sting you they leave their pheromones in you which will attract the other bees to attack. That is how they kill the honeybees too.
To the honey bees, the hornets are monsters who take their young to multiply says Erica Vella on “What Happened To….?”
The honey bees in Asia have developed defence mechanisms to defend themselves but the bees in North America were not prepared for these murderous intruders.
Moufida and John got in touch with Paul van Westendorp, British Columbia’s provincial apiculturist, to get his approval and help to find and destroy the Nanaimo nest.
The team they assembled to do this wore not only their beekeeping equipment but they wore layers and layers of clothing. One man even wore a bullet-proof vest.
The nest was buried underground and they were out looking for it at night. They almost stepped on it!
A man named Conrad tried to suck up the hornets with a hand vacuum but he got 7 stings when the vacuum nozzle was too tight to work. The team used CO2 to knock the hornets out and then they took and tossed them into rubbing alcohol to test their DNA later. They collected 200 murder hornets. Conrad was in massive pain but didn’t fear for his life.
There are still Asian Hornet nests being found but folks in the know are monitoring this…. 4 at last count have been eradicated in Washington State recently. We now know the hornets prefer to build their nest in forests.
No one knows how they will function in our local ecosystems and that is a worry they say. If nests are discovered they must be eradicated. (The mountain ranges are actually a good deterrent for the murderous insects found in B.C.. )
So there you have it. Now let’s just worry about the Monkey Pox……. arrrrggggghhhhh!
