Asian Giant Murder Hornets Eradicated

Northern giant hornet passed into this country by unknown means in 2019. Its sting is very painful, but it’s more threatening to honeybee hives than it is to humans.

You may have been calling it, as I did, the “Asian murder hornet.” Entomologists reclassified it a couple of years ago as the “northern giant hornet.” However, anyone who read or heard about it was willing to leave the name where it had been.

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Whatever you call it, however, this is an insect that is very large and very intimidating. It posed serious threats to the North American honeybee population, and therefore, to much of our agriculture.

Members of the Washington State Dept. of Agriculture hold equipment used to remove the first giant northern hornet nest in the United States. Oct. 2022. Photo credit to Washington State Dept. of Agriculture. Click image for larger view.

However, Federal and Washington state officials set out to eliminate the pest from our continent, and now, 3 years without a sighting they appear to have succeeded.

UPI reporters filed the details of this victory. Here is that information in case you’d like to learn more.

What about Killer Bees?
Some of you are old enough (or have lived in Texas long enough) to remember “killer bees.”

Africanized honey bee photo courtesy biology department ucsd.edu.

This story on the hornets made me wonder whatever happened to killer bees. Maybe I’ve been going to the wrong barbershop, but my friends haven’t been talking about them for a long time.

So, I did a quick search online using key words “Texas A&M” and “killer bees.”

I got corrected. They’re called “Africanized bees” because they originated from queen bees sent to South America from Africa more than 60 years ago with the intent of breeding the Africans’ better “work ethic” into the sluggish bees native to South America.

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Somehow, the queens escaped, and the resulting crosses between native honeybees and the escapees resulted in hybrid bees with the aggressive traits.

Hive of Africanized honeybees. If you come across one of these, it’s time to contact a professional pest control company to eliminate them. Photo courtesy Univ. of Flor. Dept. of Entomology.

From southern South America they began to migrate across that continent. They made it through the narrows of Panama and all the way into South Texas. At that point they had clear sailing and entomologists feared they would spread as far as cold weather would allow.

That was the mid-2000s. I’ll use 2006 as my benchmark, because this fact sheet from Texas A&M AgriLife Research says that at that point 163 or our state’s 254 counties had reported AHB activity. It also has some very useful information on the insect’s habits, how to avoid getting stung, and what to do if you are.

And that’s where the trails went a bit cold for me. They’re still definitely “out there.” North Carolina posted a revision of their AHB sheet just a couple of months back. Here is that link.

Posted by Neil Sperry
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