Even if you don’t know anything about them, their name is enough to clue you in that murder hornets are bad news. Yet, incredibly, this invasive species has been eradicated from the United States around five years after they were first observed in the Pacific Northwest.
The largest members of the wasp family, the northern giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia, popularly known as the murder hornet) is native to much of Asia. Measuring around two inches long, they have a stinger that can deliver a potent venom, making their sting excruciatingly painful and dangerous for humans. And while they typically leave people alone unless provoked, their extra-long stingers are terrifying enough.
In their native regions, honeybees have developed an incredible defensive strategy to protect themselves from murder hornets, which can decimate a bee colony in under two hours, decapitating and then consuming thousands of bees. When a hornet makes its way into the hive, the bees immediately swarm around the invader, piling on top of it and vibrating their muscles so furiously that the hornet is subjected to dangerously high temperatures and carbon dioxide levels, eventually killing it. However, honeybees in other parts of the world have not developed this response and are vulnerable to hornets that invade their hives.
In 2019, murder hornets were first spotted in North America on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, followed by sightings in northwest Washington state. Environmental authorities acted quickly, knowing that allowing the hornets to establish themselves in North America would make them exceedingly difficult to eradicate. Entomologists and pest control experts set traps and scanned for murder hornets using thermal cameras, as well as using tiny trackers to find their nests. Four nests were destroyed in Washington state in 2020 and 2021, which was apparently enough to halt their potentially exponential growth.
So long, murder hornets:
- As of late 2024, the murder hornet appears to have been eradicated from the United Sates, in a rare victory over an invasive species.
- Nearly 1,000 invasive insect species have been spotted in the United States since the middle of the 19th century. Species invasions are likely to increase over the next couple of decades due to the ease and frequency of international travel and shipping.
- In addition to easing our collective nightmares, the eradication of murder hornets is excellent news for honeybees and for U.S. agriculture in general, as honeybees are important pollinators for many types of food, especially fruit.