An Urgent Call to Entomologists
On Friday, October 23, entomologists in Washington state discovered the first nest of murder hornets in the US. This sounds terrifying, mostly because a murder hornet sting is extremely painful and will cause a human arm to swell up like a balloon. I made the mistake of watching a Coyote Peterson video in which he allows himself to be stung by one of these hornets, and it was harder to watch than any horror movie. It’s apparently a searing, burning, electric pain that lasts for several minutes. At one point, Peterson had to take off his watch because the swelling in his arm was cutting off circulation to his hand.
As scary as a muder hornet sting sounds, the real threat they pose is to honeybees. They are a ravenous species, and they routinely attack beehives to dig out food. With their strong mandibles, they are able to destroy a honeybee hive in a matter of hours. Why does this matter so much? Since bees pollinate flowers and many food crops, they are central to keep most of nature alive. The US honeybee population is already very low, and with predators like the murder hornet on the scene, the situation will likely get much worse. Put briefly, we need bees, and the murder hornets kill bees. For this reason, the appearance of a murder hornet nest in Washington state is a matter of serious concern to us all.
What are murder hornets, exactly? Murder hornets (vespa mandarinia) are native to East Asia, and they can grow to be two inches in length. To put this in perspective, common hornets usually measure about one inch in length, and common wasps do not tend to grow past one-half an inch. They make their nests in the ground, and hikers in rural Japan and China can at times be surprised by them and receive painful stings that can in some cases be fatal. Each year, roughly 50 people in Japan die from murder hornet attacks. Even so, murder hornets, which the Japanese refer to as “giant sparrow wasps” (because of their size), have become a kind of delicacy in Tokyo and other Japanese cities. Some restaurants fry the hornet grubs until all the venom is out and mix it with rice. Others deep-fry the hornets and eat them as a snack. Some restaurants even sell liquor made from the hornets, and the venom supposedly gives the liquor a nice kick.
If murder hornets pose such a serious threat to honeybees in the US, why aren’t they a major threat in Asia? The answer has to do with natural selection. Murder hornets are not a major threat to Asian honeybees, because these bees have evolved with effective measures to defend themselves from murder hornets. In short, they lure a scout hornet into their hive and then smother it. Honeybees in the US have not evolved alongside murder hornets, so they do not know how to defend themselves. They treat murder hornets like any other threat, and they die in the thousands when just a handful of these hornets attack the hive. Given this, a small number of murder hornet nests can take out thousands of American beehives.
The swift action of entomologists in Washington state saved the region from a wider problem with murder hornets. That said, the problem is far from over. As long as products continue to be shipped back and forth between the US and Asia, there is a chance that animal stowaways like the murder hornet will make their way across the Pacific. There is no easy solution to the threat that the giant Asian hornet poses to American honey bees (and people), but it will be necessary to remain vigilant and support the work of entomologists.
