{"id":523,"date":"2020-05-14T12:41:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-14T16:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/fannin-gilmer\/?p=523"},"modified":"2022-03-29T12:43:01","modified_gmt":"2022-03-29T16:43:01","slug":"asian-giant-hornet-murder-hornet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/fannin-gilmer\/2020\/05\/asian-giant-hornet-murder-hornet\/","title":{"rendered":"Asian Giant Hornet (“Murder” Hornet)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Recently, there has been a lot of buzz in the news and a surge of interest in the Asian giant hornet, Vespa mandarinia. <\/em>The coverage is not traced to any recent event. The insect was found last September 2019 in Vancouver Island (Canada) and again in December 2019 in Washington state. Fortunately, to date, this invasive insect has neither been confirmed present in the state of Georgia nor east of the Mississippi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Asian giant hornet is a \u201ctrue\u201d hornet and the world\u2019s largest, ranging in size from 1.5 to slightly over 2 inches long (38-50mm). The stinger is nearly \u00bc-inch long and stings are extremely painful. Each year in Japan, 30-50 people die from being stung by these hornets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The venom is not the most lethal among bees and wasps, but due to the insect\u2019s large size, the dose is larger than any other stinging insect Americans typically encounter. Human sting deaths are biased toward individuals who are prone to anaphylactic reactions or to individuals who receive large numbers of stings. One or a few stings from an Asian giant hornet should not be life-threatening to an average individual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the Asian giant hornet is not necessarily aggressive towards humans, livestock or pets, they can inflict a devastating blow to honey bee colonies. There are three phases to an Asian giant hornet attacking a honey bee colony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first is the \u201chunting phase\u201d where individual hornets will capture bees at the entrance of the colony and return to their nest to feed them to their young. The second phase is the \u201cslaughter phase\u201d where the hornets will mark a particular colony with a pheromone to recruit their sisters to the site. Numerous hornets will then descend upon the colony, killing all of the workers and returning to their nest with their prey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the bee hive is dead, hornets enter the \u201coccupation phase,\u201d which involves taking over the hive, collecting pupae and larvae, and returning to their own nest to feed them to their young. In this phase the hornets will guard the hive entrance as if it were their own nest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The aftermath of an attack is a rather gruesome site. The visible key to an Asian giant hornet attack is \u201cdecapitated\u201d or \u201cripped apart\u201d bees, and not just a pile of intact dead bees, which could be the result of pesticides, starvation or something else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the hornet that incites the famous bee defensive response of \u201ccooking\u201d hornets to death. Asian honey bees grab an invading hornet, pile around it and raise their thoracic temperatures to the critical temperature that is lethal to wasps but tolerable to bees. Unfortunately, American honey bees, which are of European not Asiatic descent, do not have this behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Again, at this time there have been no confirmed cases of this hornet\u2019s presence in Georgia or anywhere outside of Washington state. However, it is important to note that there are other wasps and hornets that may be confused with the Asian giant hornet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the past couple weeks, I\u2019ve been contacted by many concerned Fannin and Gilmer county residents concerning wasps and hornets that are already residents of our state:<\/p>\n\n\n\n