A seventh Asian giant hornet has been found in Whatcom. Here’s where it was trapped.
A second Asian giant hornet has been found in a Washington State Department of Agriculture trap — this one near Custer, the agency announced on Monday, Aug. 17.
It was the first male Asian giant hornet to be found in the U.S., according to the department’s news release.
The latest brings to seven the number of Asian giant hornets found in Washington state since 2019. All seven were found in Whatcom County and represent the first sightings not only for the state but also the U.S.
The hornet was caught in a bottle trap, which was collected on July 29 and processed at the department of agriculture’s entomology lab Thursday, Aug. 13.
Officials said the male was trapped weeks earlier than they expected.
“Trapping a male Asian giant hornet in July initially came as a surprise,” said Sven Spichiger, the department’s managing entomologist. “But further examination of the research and consultation with international experts confirmed that a few males can indeed emerge early in the season.”
The Custer area was where a mated queen was found dead earlier this year and a suspected bee kill was reported in 2019, officials said.
State agriculture officials said they will set traps in the area in an attempt to capture a live Asian giant hornet, tag it and track it back to its nest, with the goal of destroying it to prevent the invasive pests from spreading in the Pacific Northwest.
This was the second Asian giant hornet caught in one of the department of agriculture’s traps.
The first one trapped on July 14 has been identified as a queen who hadn’t mated, Spichiger said during a virtual press conference on Monday, Aug. 17. As a result, officials won’t proceed with their original plan, which was to set up different traps to capture a live Asian giant hornet in the area because it means that queen wasn’t able to form a nest before being caught.
Because the second one found near Custer was a male, Spichiger said that was a “heads up” that there was a nest in the area.
The burly hornets are known for their painful stings when threatened and feared for the threat they pose to honeybees — they can decimate hives quickly — and, by extension, the hundreds of crops in Washington state that the bees pollinate.
About the size of an adult thumb, the Asian giant hornet, or Vespa mandarinia, is the world’s largest hornet species and a predator of honeybees and other insects. They are identifiable by their large yellow/orange heads.
The invasive hornets’ native range is Asia. They also are known as the Japanese hornet, yak-killer hornet, the giant sparrow bee and popularly as murder hornets after a New York Times article.
Asian giant hornets are typically dormant during winter. They’re seen usually from July through October, though most likely in August and September as the number of workers increase as a colony grows.
They primarily nest in large colonies in the ground — in hollows formed by rotting roots, hollow trunks and rodent burrows. They can, though rarely, nest above ground in hollow trees and human structures, state agriculture officials have said.
Report it
If you think you’ve seen an Asian giant hornet, the Washington State Department of Agriculture wants you to report it.
Provide as much detail as you can about what you saw and where. Get a photo, if you can safely, and submit it. If you find a dead Asian giant hornet, keep it for potential testing.
Here’s how to report it:
▪ Go online to the department of agriculture’s Hornet Watch Report Form.
▪ Email hornets@agr.wa.gov.
▪ Call 800-443-6684.
▪ Stay updated at the Asian giant hornet watch Facebook group.
Learn more at agr.wa.gov/hornets, including how members of the public can create bottle traps for Asian giant hornets.
More than 1,800 traps have been set by the department, other organizations and citizen scientists in Washington state, mostly in Whatcom and Skagit counties.
Those interested in trapping still have time to build and set traps on their own property, officials said.
This story was originally published August 17, 2020 at 10:12 AM.
