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A nest found last week housed around 1,500 hornets.
WSDA staff eradicated the first Asian giant hornet nest of the year. The nest housed around 1,500 hornets.
Karla Salp / Washington State Department of Agriculture
Dressed in white protective suits and thick gloves, staff from the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA) eradicated the first Asian giant hornet nest of the year last week in Northwestern the state.
The Asian giant hornet, colloquially known as the “murderous hornet,” is the largest of its kind in the world and is known for its decimation of bee hives. In the Pacific Northwest, the first confirmed sighting of the hornet (scientific name: Vespa Mandarinia) arrived in December 2019. At the time, the WSDA established a public hotline for reported sightings and received thousands of tips, leading to the extermination of the first nest found in the state in 2020, which contained more of 500 hornets. But the species persisted, and the nest discovered last week was home to around 1,500 hornets.
The recent WSDA effort was crowned with success with a resident who spotted a giant Asian hornet attacking paper wasp nests on their property, took a photo, and sent it to the department. After the sighting was confirmed by the WSDA, officers were able to capture live hornets in the area and affix radio beacons to three of them with a piece of kevlar wire. One of them finally brought them back to the nest.
The average Asian giant hornet is 1.75 inches long.
Karla Salp / Washington State Department of Agriculture
Below are some numbers that give an idea of just how annoying and costly the Asian giant hornet problem is for the West:
1.75
Average size, in inches, of an Asian giant hornet.
774
Number of traps set by the Washington State Department of Agriculture in 2021 as of August 30.
712
Number of traps set by citizen scientists in 2021 as of August 30.
2
Nests found in the United States, both in Washington, since the hornets were first discovered in North America in 2019.
The nest found last week contained nine layers of combs.
Karla Salp / Washington State Department of Agriculture
2 111
Approximate number of reported sightings of Asian giant hornets in 2021.
3
Number of sightings verified to be Asian giant hornets in 2021.
34
Confirmed number of all-weather sightings in the state.
200
Approximate number of queens – which are particularly intrusive as they eventually leave and form new colonies – found in a nest in 2020.
20,000,000
Dollar amount requested for the Killer Hornet Eradication Pilot Program in the Federal Stimulus Package.
170
Price, in dollars, of the beekeeping combination used by WSDA agents in eradication efforts.
7,991
Number of people in the Asian Giant Hornet Watch Official Facebook Group.
Jessica kutz is associate editor for High Country News. We welcome letters from readers. Email him at [email protected] or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the political editor.
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