After months without hearing any mention of the chilling phrasemurder hornet , you may be wondering if the creature existed only in some half - bury incubus from last class .
unluckily , murder hornet are actual , and there ’s at least one buzzing around Washington as you read this . As Gizmodoreports , the Washington State Department of Agriculture ( WSDA ) recently announce that a murder hornet — the first living specimen seen in 2021 — was spotted near a paper wasp nest outside Blaine , Washington , on August 11 .
It ’s not the first timemurder hornets , or Asian giant hornet — so named because they ’re native to Japan , China , and other parts of Asia — have evince up in the area . They first appeared in Washington in December 2019 , and in October 2020 , the WSDA got free of a nest just two miles from this late sighting . “ This hornet is demo the same deportment we saw last twelvemonth — assail composition wasp nest , ” WSDA manage entomologist Sven Spichiger say in anews loss . “ If you have paper white Anglo-Saxon Protestant nests on your property and hold up in the field , keep an eye on them and report any Asian jumbo hornets you see . Note the direction they fly off to as well . ”
WSDA workers are now focused on trapping a live hornet and letting it conduct them to its nest , so they can launch another eradication mission . Murder hornet live up to their homicidal byname , and they can pour down you if you sustain multiple bite . But their main target is Apis mellifera : It only takes a few hornets to decimate an intact hive within time of day , which they do by ripping the heads off the bees ( and then flying the bee ’ bodies back to their nest , where they ’re eaten by baby hornet ) .
In other words , slaying hornets are a huge terror tobeepopulations , and it ’s important to keep them from further propagating . If you think you see one in Washington State , you should account ithere .
[ h / tGizmodo ]
