If You Ever Spot A Giant Murder Hornet, Here’s Why You Should Report It Right Away
Its sting is said to feel like a scalding nail piercing the flesh. It rips the heads off its enemies, fleeing the scene without a trace. It dwarfs similar species – it’s about twice their size – and has huge bulging eyes like something straight out of a horror movie. If you see one, experts advise you to run and call the authorities immediately. It is the fearsome “murder hornet” from Asia, and worryingly, it’s now taken up residency in the U.S.
No one really knows how these murder hornets came to the U.S. This particular species of insect is, after all, typically native to parts of Japan, China, South Korea, Vietnam and Thailand. All the same, sightings of this fearsome creature have now been made in Whatcom, Washington, and further north in Canada’s British Columbia. So what makes their presence such a great concern?
Not only are they the largest insects of their kind, these hornets can pose a threat to humans. The wasp’s sting can cause serious health problems or even death if the recipient is allergic or subjected to a sustained attack. But that risk is small compared to wider concerns about the hornet invasion. Yep, these little critters have another target in their sights.
It’s a threat that Custer, Washington, beekeeper Ted McFall witnessed first-hand in November 2019. As he described to The New York Times newspaper in May 2020, “As I drove into the bee yard I could see from afar kind of a dark shadow in front of one of my beehives. I thought, ‘Oh, I wonder what that is?’” It was what he could only describe as “carnage.”
McFall saw a scene that could have been lifted from a Hollywood slasher flick. But where he saw devastation, another’s encounter with the menacing hornet was far more docile. In fact a Japanese man identified only as Twitter user Mikuru625 claimed to have captured one of the wasps and kept it as a pet in 2014.
