27 ms·

Washington crews destroy first U.S. “murder hornet” nest

528 points by cwwc 6y ago

hikerclimber 6y ago
hope these hornets kill lots of people.
rogerkirkness 6y ago
Wait until they find out about heart disease.
jessriedel 6y ago
So they really think the infestation is small enough that it's feasible to find and destroy all the nests by hand?
- bigbubba 6y ago
  Better to be optimistic and try than to surrender to the hornets immediately.
- moultano 6y ago
  Even if they never eradicate them entirely, destroying their hives whenever they're found can keep them in check.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- freedomben 6y ago
  At this point we're super early in the spread, and as far as what I read they think this may be the only one in the US. Worth noting that one nest can create hundreds of new queens that will hibernate the winter and establish a nest in the spring. Not all will survive, but with minimal competition, and significant feeding opportunities from a mostly untapped ecosystem, many will. Destroying one nest to stop exponential growth is a great investment, especially early on. Note: I'm not an expert in this area, I'm mostly parroting stuff I read in other articles.
  - jessriedel 6y ago
    This seems like an either-or thing. Either you fully eradicate the species from the area, or they establish a foothold that is infeasible to remove nest-by-nest, and then they grow exponentially.
- TomK32 6y ago
  I'm more surprised about it being the first nest considering trade across the Pacific is going on for some time now...
- acomjean 6y ago
  I think they might be able to.. The asian longhorn beetle seems to be in check in the US (though another pest, the emerald ash borer they've given up on controlling). But those are species that don't have centralized nests.. This might be easier if you can trap them and trace them back to their homes..
- sethammons 6y ago
  Doubt it. I’m two states (about 8 hr drive) in Montana and my wife and I think we saw one. I tried to get a pic but was too slow.
  - throwanem 6y ago
    There are a lot of large insects that bear a superficial resemblance to V. mandarinia, especially in the absence of familiarity with hymenopterans. From WSDA's map of citizen sightings, it looks like the most commonly mistaken animals are large sawflies, which are very distant relatives of wasps and hornets and actually serve a significant ecological role by parasitizing the larvae of various tree-boring beetles.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > So they really think the infestation is small enough that it's feasible to find and destroy all the nests by hand? No, they probably think that it is likely that, if that is not the case, it is likely to still be small enough that the progress can be significantly slowed by that means until a more complete solution is found. Given that magnitude matters a lot and that it's a major threat to bee populations and through them much of the agriculture of the country, stalling tactics are a lot better than nothing.
samcheng 6y ago
I've never had to deal with a murder hornet infestation, but I can approve of their 'vacuum' method for clearing yellowjacket nests in high-traffic areas. Partially fill a shop vac with soapy water, stick the nozzle as close to the nest entrance as possible, then turn on the vacuum and hear the wasps get sucked into the machine as they try to enter or exit the nest. It takes a few hours, and potentially a couple of separate sessions to mop up any stragglers. No fancy beekeeper suit necessary, and, best of all, no need to spread nasty poisons.
- dheera 6y ago
  The method is fine but I'd probably still wear a suit while setting such a thing up ... at least a jacket, gloves, full pants tucked into thick socks, and mosquito net.
  - jcims 6y ago
    Same. I can tell you from visceral experience that a tractor at 12mph doesn't outrun pissed off yellow jackets XD (are they ever not pissed off?)
- wl 6y ago
  In my experience, just vacuuming up yellowjackets in a shop vac kills them. No soapy water needed.
  - JohnBooty 6y ago
    I don't understand how that kills them. Blunt trauma? Seems like you'd just have a huge pile of mostly-alive wasps in your shop-vac.
    - AlexandrB 6y ago
      Most insects are very prone to dying of dehydration if their exoskeleton is pierced - it's how diatomaceous earth works. My best guess with how vacuums kill insects is small nicks to the exoskeleton from flying debris causing eventual death. I've never vacuumed up an insect or spider and seen it come out alive.
sokoloff 6y ago
> trapping and using dental floss to tie tracking devices to the hornets What? That seems crazy (and cool) to be able to create a tracking device light enough for a hornet to fly and still have enough battery to transmit even a periodic chirp.
- jdndbfbf 6y ago
  The probably don't fly very far from their nest. https://youtube.com/watch?v=3sX7bmNv10c https://youtube.com/watch?v=3sX7bmNv10c
  - vvG94KbDUtRa 6y ago
    on the contrary, these things can roam up to 5 miles from their nests
- snypher 6y ago
  It is pretty cool tech. One thing I noticed is the battery is depleting from the time it's ordered; probably not a lot of room for a power switch. This one is 3x11mm and weighs 0.15g; https://atstrack.com/tracking-products/transmitters/product-transmitters.aspx?serie=T15 https://atstrack.com/tracking-products/transmitters/product-...
  - TomK32 6y ago
    Isn't a simple strip of plastics to isolate the battery a common "power switch"?
    - wl 6y ago
      That'd probably be a good solution if the transmitter didn't need weatherproofing. I suppose adhesive film could be placed over the gap after removing the tab, though.
    - Johnny555 6y ago
      I doubt they use a socket that would allow the battery to be isolated, it's probably directly soldered in for weight and reliability. Otherwise they could just ship the battery uninstalled and let the user plug it in when he gets it. A weight of 0.15g doesn't give a lot of room for extra components like a battery socket.
ReptileMan 6y ago
2020. We have cazadores now. Have deathclaws been spotted too? Asking for a friend.
Frost1x 6y ago
Those protective suits look like something from a science fiction work. It even looks like a cell shaded rendering at second glance. I guess these hornets earned their title.
Exmoor 6y ago
It makes me a little nauseous to think about all the resources going to tracking down these insects, but this is truly an area where an ounce of prevention is worth many pounds of cure. The scope of North America's invasive species problem is enormous. For many folks in urban areas, it's possible that you might go your whole day only encountering one native bird species (American Crow), but a whole host of invasive species (Rock Pigeon, House Sparrows, European Starlings). History shows that early, active intervention can pay enormous dividends. For example, Alberta remains the only area in North America without non-native rats due to a major interventions: https://www.alberta.ca/history-of-rat-control-in-alberta.aspx https://www.alberta.ca/history-of-rat-control-in-alberta.asp...
- jameshart 6y ago
  ‘All the resources’ make you nauseous? Seems like a weird reaction. Washington State department of agriculture’s budget is public information; they spend about a quarter of a billion dollars a year on all their programs. I can’t imagine this particular operation is making much of a dent in that overall spend. According to the captions of those photographs, they have entomologists and pest control specialists on staff already. Salaries are also public. Sven Spichinger, shown in one of those pictures, Managing Entomologist, is on $87,000 a year - whether he’s hunting for murder hornets or not, presumably. There are three different levels of ‘Pest Biologist’ job in the department. It kind of looks like this is a project that is taking up the time of a few people who they already had on staff, to deal with exactly this kind of problem. Does all government spending make you nauseous, or only when it’s visibly helping?
  - dimitrios1 6y ago
    Now how much money we spend eating out when we could be saving by cooking large meals and eating leftovers, that makes me nauseous.
    - Klinky 6y ago
      If you're cooking anything with meat or imported produce, you're still damaging the environment, regardless of where it's cooked. Also your leftovers need to be put into something(often plastic) and stored in a refrigerated or frozen environment(electric/carbon costs), then reheated(electric/carbon cost). If you get tired of eating the same thing after 3 days and the rest rots away in your fridge, you've just created a ton of waste, or if you think to yourself you're going to spend 3 hours doing weekly meal-prep, but then flake out and don't do it, you just wasted everything. Some people are just terrible chefs or do not have the energy for it after working 50 - 60 hours in the week. Also you could make a case that large houses with nice kitchens also have environmental costs to build and maintain, and living in small apartments with communal kitchens or restaurants nearby is better.
ethbr0 6y ago
1994: We'll need airtight space suits for an Ebola outbreak. 2020: Surgical masks are a bit much to expect people to wear during a pandemic, Ebola has been circulating in Congo since 2014, and we'll need airtight space suits for a murder hornet outbreak. Truly, the 90s were a simpler time.
- umvi 6y ago
  Had we all been wearing surgical masks in public since the 90s, probably well over a million lives would have been saved by now from flu deaths alone. Basically, since the 90s we've put a much much higher value on human life. I expect mask usage to extend far beyond covid and handshaking to cease being a cultural greeting.
  - petertodd 6y ago
    Why do you think that? COVID-19 has become more infectious over the course of the pandemic, with a strain that results in higher viral loads becoming predominant: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32697968/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32697968/ It's hard to compare across countries. But mask-wearing Japan and South Korea have higher rates of flu and pneumonia deaths than the US/Canada/Europe: https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/influenza-pneumonia/by-country/ https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/influenza... As surgical masks are much less than 100% effective even in ideal conditions, let alone actual wear, it wouldn't be surprising if more usage of them would just be an evolutionary pressure for flu to have higher viral output. Quite similar to how widespread use of less than 100% effective anti-bacterial agents just results in bacteria evolving resistance, reducing the usefulness of those agents for the most vulnerable part of the population who need them most.
    - ethbr0 6y ago
      > It's hard to compare across countries. But mask-wearing Japan and South Korea have higher rates of flu and pneumonia deaths than the US/Canada/Europe Possibly confounded by disparate population densities. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density#Density_of_the_most_populous_countries https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_depend...
mrfusion 6y ago
Remember when killer bees were the big scare? They were moving north. Everyone was worried. Whatever happened with that? I haven’t heard about them in years.
- petertodd 6y ago
  They're still a problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4ldpyIE5t4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4ldpyIE5t4 Interestingly, that video suggests that some beekeepers actually prefer the aggressive, "africanized", bees as they can be more productive than less aggressive bees in the right situation. But they're a public health hazard, so most beekeepers choose to euthanize more aggressive hives to deliberately breed calmer, safer, bees. This video also suggests that the high level of aggression wasn't optimal in at least some areas, so it's being evolved out and the bees are becoming less aggressive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psBomn2cPNw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psBomn2cPNw
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    > most beekeepers choose to euthanize more aggressive hives to deliberately breed calmer, safer, bees. I wander why they don’t just requeen?
    - petertodd 6y ago
      IIUC workers (or at least worker larvae) can become queens under the right conditions, so it's more likely for the undesirable genes to be removed if the entire hive is euthanized. Also, in the case of that video, IIRC having the still aggressive workers in the locations available to that beekeeper wouldn't be desirable, even if later generations were calmer.
      - i_cannot_hack 6y ago
        It's not about the queens, it's about the drones (male bees). The workers only start laying eggs if the hive goes without a queen for several weeks, and either way the eggs they lay are unfertilized and therefore cannot be raised into new queens. So requeening it is certain to work in that regard. However, unless you euthanize whole hive, the aggressive drones will continue to live for a while and can mate with queens in neighbouring hives and spread the aggressive genes that way. So there is an advantage to euthanizing the whole hive instead of requeening it.
hikerclimb 6y ago
Hopefully they murder humans
luminati 6y ago
Calling it Asian is racist /s
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't do this here.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hcurtiss 6y ago
I wonder why they didn't use an insecticide on the nest. The exterminator I hired used a powder on the entry to our attic and the Yellowjackets carried it into the nest and it wiped out the whole thing brilliantly (and we sealed the hole). A targeted application would require very little product. With a powder, it would also kill any insects that got away, and it could trace/damage other nests if the hornet moved to another colony. It seems to me a vacuum would be less thorough, and I would think they'd want to be very thorough in this instance, maybe even to the point of doing both.
- datameta 6y ago
  It seems most likely that they wanted to avoid killing the hornets. Perhaps to study them and find out which native Japanese population of hornets they came from in order to stem the flow of this invasive species. Could even be simply to preserve life.
  - MauranKilom 6y ago
    The hornets in that tube look very dead to me.
    - datameta 6y ago
      The hornets had been put on ice which lowers their metabolism to a state of stupor but they recover from this as soon as their temperature goes back up. Another common technique for making stinging insects docile during handling is using smoke to calm a beehive's alertness response through inhibiting their ability to detect pheromones that signal danger.
whatsmyusername 6y ago
Murder hornets are the species that in Japan you don't call an exterminator, you call the police. They're that nasty.
forgotmypw17 6y ago
Universal rhyme would dictate that machine intelligence is learning our behavior and one day apply it to us when it is in charge. All children eventually become stronger than their parents, and most parents reap what they sow, and are treated a combination of how they treated their parents and their children. In this case, our ancestors is all the other DNA-based life on earth, and our children are silicon machines. Now, think about how we are treating the animals and also the machines (yelling at, cursing out, smashing, being very impatient with, expecting perfection) The picture is downright scary.
praptak 6y ago
"Washington State Department of Agriculture workers, illuminated by red lamps, vacuum a nest of Asian giant hornets from a tree in Blaine" Interesting. Why do they use red lamps?
- rory096 6y ago
  Red light is typically used at night in order to avoid destroying the eye's rhodopsin, which helps with night vision and takes at least 30 minutes of non-exposure to blue light to fully replenish. You'll see pilots and astronomers using red flashlights for this reason. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodopsin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodopsin
- Davidzheng 6y ago
  I think hornets probably don't react to red light. I think bee researchers also use red lights in labs when extracting bees so they don't become active in the presence of light.
doc_gunthrop 6y ago
Murder hornets are a real threat to honey bee hives. A handful of hornets can take out a hive of thousands. What's interesting is the way that honey bees defend against them. A bunch of bees surround each hornet, then they intensify the flapping of their wings, which then generates enough heat to kill the hornet. In other words, the hornets are cooked alive.
- _joel 6y ago
  That's only an adaptation that some bees have. European ones, for example, do not have that adaptation so carnage ensues.
  - doc_gunthrop 6y ago
    Yes, it's worthwhile to note that it's an adaptation that evolved regionally.
- bgentry 6y ago
  It’s worth noting that the honeybee defense mechanism you describe is unique to Asian honeybees, which evolved this defense specifically because of the native Asian giant hornet / murder hornet. European honeybees, which are used in most of the world, have no such defense mechanism and would indeed be helplessly slaughtered by these hornets. I’d definitely advocate watching some YouTube footage about these creatures, they’re fascinating.
  - pm90 6y ago
    Why don't we cross-breed European with Asian honeybees? Or just start using Asian honeybees?
    - tpetry 6y ago
      Isn‘t that exactly hoe a special very aggressive breed was created? They breed two different ones, both not aggressive but with interesting capabilities and somehow they created an aggressive one?
11235813213455 6y ago
I know bees are fundamental but I think we should adjust ourselves along with nature, and not try to always dictate things. We can live without honey, eat fruits instead (for which wasps and hornets participate also in pollination), they even provide better nutrients
- macintux 6y ago
  Ignoring the threat that these hornets pose to people, standing back and allowing our honeybee population to be wiped out would have incalculable effects across the ecosystem. They're a major pollinator. Sure, there are others, but why would we risk adding more catastrophe when we've already wiped out such a huge number of insects?
- TulliusCicero 6y ago
  > I know bees are fundamental but I think we should adjust ourselves along with nature, and not try to always dictate things. Nature? You realize this almost certainly happened because of international travel/trade, right?
  - 11235813213455 6y ago
    > "this happened" You mean hornets? Of course I know, but we can still adapt our consumption mode, honeybees are for what? honey mostly. We can also reduce planes travel, that wouldn't hurt as well
    - TulliusCicero 6y ago
      > You mean hornets? No, I mean this specific species of hornet suddenly appearing thousands of kilometers away. That wasn't nature, that was mankind's intervention. Getting rid of them is hardly us 'dictating' things, it's restoring the natural order.
      - 11235813213455 6y ago
        > restoring the natural order that sounds weird, of course human influence massively things, but you can't just decide on how to restore the "natural" state like this, it may be even worse by trying to do something brutally. The good honeybees vs the bad hornets or wasps. It's much more complex. There are articles about how wild bees do a better job at pollination https://www.google.com/search?q=wild+bees+vs+honey+bees+pollination https://www.google.com/search?q=wild+bees+vs+honey+bees+poll..., wasps similarly play a huge role, for example with fruit trees (figs is the best example)
emcq 6y ago
Blaine Washington is right along the Canadian border and next to many islands. The islands are sparsely inhabited and infrequently visited by humans it makes me wonder if maybe there is still a colony out there. It seems like a difficult area to do containment so glad they tracked these down. It looks like in 2019 Vancouver island (which is huge) had a colony get eradicated, but otherwise haven't seen much else reported. https://www.ontario.ca/page/asian-giant-hornets https://www.ontario.ca/page/asian-giant-hornets
lawwantsin17 6y ago
HOW IS THIS NEWS?
- mastax 6y ago
  Invasive species can have huge effects on agriculture and other human activities. Giant murder hornets can be scary even beyond these rational concerns. The presence of a new invasive species can thus be important news as the spread of those species can effect human activities.
sabujp 6y ago
That's some awesome PPE, we should just release murder hornets everywhere.
Bud 6y ago
Wait, they destroyed Mitch McConnell's office? That's great news!
ChuckMcM 6y ago
I find the bit about affixing a tracking devices to hornets with dental floss part of the amazing bit. Some seriously tiny radios these days.
yawz 6y ago
I’m a beekeeper and every passing year it becomes harder to keep my colonies alive. I’m really glad that we’re taking this threat seriously, because we don’t need one more problem on our list of things that kill our bees. While I’m at it, please allow me to remind everyone that there are thousands of solitary bee species in the world. They are the ones that go extinct or in real danger compared to our honey bees. There are many struggling beekeepers like me in the world, and we’re doing our best to keep our bees alive. But thousands of species are without keepers and they are dying. Please be gentle to the nature. Let them live. (Edit: wondering how you can help, here's what I humbly suggested below in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24889023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24889023)
- RyanOD 6y ago
  In addition, do what you can to support bees. Here are some simple suggestions from Nat Geo. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/05/150524-bees-pollinators-animals-science-gardens-plants/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/05/150524-bees-...
  - coliveira 6y ago
    This is an example of typical modern thinking that believes we can solve problems such as global warming and bee extinction by doing individual actions. This is completely nonsense. Either we do this as a public policy or there is no solution.
    - NateEag 6y ago
      Your comment is an example of typical programmer thinking that says "only a perfect solution is worth releasing". I have been guilty of that error countless times. An individual's actions will not solve a society's woes, but they don't need to. If they help a little bit where they are, they can be worth doing. Furthermore, individuals trying to help does not preclude larger-scale solutions. The people attempting individual actions could even contribute to the larger-scale or policy-based solutions.
jonplackett 6y ago
I was curious about this and found this YouTube video. https://youtu.be/EZ1eAM8CChc https://youtu.be/EZ1eAM8CChc 30,000 bees killed by just 30 hornets in an hour or so. The bees just have no defence against them at all. Brutal.
- i2shar 6y ago
  Also fascinating, a related video on bees killing a hornet: https://youtu.be/UNroEwFxh6I https://youtu.be/UNroEwFxh6I
  - jonplackett 6y ago
    Yeah I saw this too - I guess those bees must have evolved with hornets as a predator and have developed that defence. But the bees in the west haven't and so they don't have any behaviour to help them.
    - chrisgd 6y ago
      European bees being destroyed, Asian bees killing the hornet.
      - jonplackett 6y ago
        Maybe we’ll have to get some Asian honey bees.
jariel 6y ago
This is a good step and we should take this seriously, it can be done. Did you know that the province of Alberta has no rats? Literally. No. Rats. It takes a serious, concerted and systematic effort but it can be done. [1] Much like we're still not doing a very good job at COVID (i.e. still applying crude measures because it's all we can do right now whereas we could be taking cues from Taiwan etc.), we can 'get good' at these things with good leadership. [1] https://www.alberta.ca/history-of-rat-control-in-alberta.aspx https://www.alberta.ca/history-of-rat-control-in-alberta.asp...
ZitchDog 6y ago
This really seems like a great opportunity to use a CRISPR gene drive to take these things out.
SoSoRoCoCo 6y ago
I was kayaking on the John Day river in northern central Oregon in 2017 and ran into a moderately sized swarm of these hornets crawling on the mud eating other bugs. Definitely been well over two years since they showed up in that part of Oregon.
honkycat 6y ago
I always find the anti-environmentalist position that pops up on HN interesting. For a technical audience, they are amazingly unaware of "Systems Thinking". Saying "MEH, there are other pollinators" is lazy thinking. Our ecosystem is a vast web of interconnections. You cannot predict how one HUGELY important species being destroyed will affect the rest of our ecosystem. Furthermore: People use honey bees for honey ( duh ). But they are more useful than just that: people drive honey bee colonies around to crops in order to pollinate them. If we don't have honey bees, we do not have crops. There is no mystical "other pollinator" that is going to fill the niche of the honey bee. Honey bees are uniquely industrialized and failure to eliminate the Murder Hornet threat to honey bees will have HUGE implications. What are you proposing exactly? We stand back and lose all of our biodiversity because we have to pay a few conservationists 1/5 of a mediocre SAAS CEO's salary? Give me a break. Humanity does not stand on its own, we still need nature to sustain ourselves. "When the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, the last river poisoned, only then will we realize that one cannot eat money." And outside of economic and survival concerns: Nature is IRREPLACEABLE. Once it is dead it is dead forever. How could you honestly take this position? What do you find valuable? What do you find beautiful? What do you live for?
- vinbreau 6y ago
  Reminds me of an old adage I heard in high school: If you take the frogs out of the environment, you don't have the same environment minus frogs, you have an entirely new ecosystem.
  - honkycat 6y ago
    The classic example is the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone: https://sites.tufts.edu/tuftsgetsgreen/2018/02/27/wolves-change-ecosystem-and-geography-in-yellowstone/ https://sites.tufts.edu/tuftsgetsgreen/2018/02/27/wolves-cha...
    - tzs 6y ago
      Wolves in Yellowstone are a "keystone species" [1]. A year ago, there was a fascinating episode of "Nature" on PBS about keystone species. It's available for free online streaming here [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_species https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_species [2] https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/the-serengeti-rules-41dfru/20105/?button=fullepisode https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/the-serengeti-rules-41dfru/2...
bibelo 6y ago
you guys in US are doomed
hikerclimber 6y ago
good. they will come back though. they are like pests.
lai 6y ago
This should be an Among Us crewmate task.
octoberfranklin 6y ago
Dude where can I get one of those awesome suits?
WalterBright 6y ago
In the Pacific Northwest, we have a couple other slow moving ecological train wrecks. The first is the himalayan blackberry, an invasive species that kills everything else and completely dominates where it has taken root. It grows everywhere. A similar story for the scotch broom. And the english ivy, which is killing the trees. All of these are everywhere and very difficult to kill.
giantg2 6y ago
Kill 'em all! (I'm a beekeeper)
galaxyLogic 6y ago
Who you gonna call? Bee-Busters!
SimeVidas 6y ago
How many nests are there in USA? Do they have a number?
vmchale 6y ago
Intense pictures from this story.
racl101 6y ago
Good. Wasps are A-holes. They do not enrich our lives. All they do is attack. They brought this on themselves.
davexunit 6y ago
Humans create a problem, try to solve it with human effort, and either prolong the problem or create a bigger one. We try to kill starlings and yet they are still here, all we've done is waste time and resources murdering them. We try to kill japanese knotweed by pulling them out of the soil or by applying herbicide and the knotweed spreads further because it thrives in a disturbed environment. Asian longhorned beetle, gyspy moths, garlic mustard, etc. Whether plant or animal, it's all the same. All wasted efforts because we're collectively unable to think on the same timescale that nature does as it works to achieve equilibrium again after the disturbance.
EricE 6y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqTubMeydDE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqTubMeydDE His whole channel is also excellent.

528 points by cwwc 6y ago

hikerclimber 6y ago

hope these hornets kill lots of people.

rogerkirkness 6y ago

Wait until they find out about heart disease.

jessriedel 6y ago

So they really think the infestation is small enough that it's feasible to find and destroy all the nests by hand?

bigbubba 6y ago
Better to be optimistic and try than to surrender to the hornets immediately.
moultano 6y ago
Even if they never eradicate them entirely, destroying their hives whenever they're found can keep them in check.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
freedomben 6y ago
At this point we're super early in the spread, and as far as what I read they think this may be the only one in the US. Worth noting that one nest can create hundreds of new queens that will hibernate the winter and establish a nest in the spring. Not all will survive, but with minimal competition, and significant feeding opportunities from a mostly untapped ecosystem, many will. Destroying one nest to stop exponential growth is a great investment, especially early on. Note: I'm not an expert in this area, I'm mostly parroting stuff I read in other articles.
- jessriedel 6y ago
  This seems like an either-or thing. Either you fully eradicate the species from the area, or they establish a foothold that is infeasible to remove nest-by-nest, and then they grow exponentially.
TomK32 6y ago
I'm more surprised about it being the first nest considering trade across the Pacific is going on for some time now...
acomjean 6y ago
I think they might be able to.. The asian longhorn beetle seems to be in check in the US (though another pest, the emerald ash borer they've given up on controlling). But those are species that don't have centralized nests.. This might be easier if you can trap them and trace them back to their homes..
sethammons 6y ago
Doubt it. I’m two states (about 8 hr drive) in Montana and my wife and I think we saw one. I tried to get a pic but was too slow.
- throwanem 6y ago
  There are a lot of large insects that bear a superficial resemblance to V. mandarinia, especially in the absence of familiarity with hymenopterans. From WSDA's map of citizen sightings, it looks like the most commonly mistaken animals are large sawflies, which are very distant relatives of wasps and hornets and actually serve a significant ecological role by parasitizing the larvae of various tree-boring beetles.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> So they really think the infestation is small enough that it's feasible to find and destroy all the nests by hand? No, they probably think that it is likely that, if that is not the case, it is likely to still be small enough that the progress can be significantly slowed by that means until a more complete solution is found. Given that magnitude matters a lot and that it's a major threat to bee populations and through them much of the agriculture of the country, stalling tactics are a lot better than nothing.

samcheng 6y ago

I've never had to deal with a murder hornet infestation, but I can approve of their 'vacuum' method for clearing yellowjacket nests in high-traffic areas. Partially fill a shop vac with soapy water, stick the nozzle as close to the nest entrance as possible, then turn on the vacuum and hear the wasps get sucked into the machine as they try to enter or exit the nest. It takes a few hours, and potentially a couple of separate sessions to mop up any stragglers. No fancy beekeeper suit necessary, and, best of all, no need to spread nasty poisons.

dheera 6y ago
The method is fine but I'd probably still wear a suit while setting such a thing up ... at least a jacket, gloves, full pants tucked into thick socks, and mosquito net.
- jcims 6y ago
  Same. I can tell you from visceral experience that a tractor at 12mph doesn't outrun pissed off yellow jackets XD (are they ever not pissed off?)
wl 6y ago
In my experience, just vacuuming up yellowjackets in a shop vac kills them. No soapy water needed.
- JohnBooty 6y ago
  I don't understand how that kills them. Blunt trauma? Seems like you'd just have a huge pile of mostly-alive wasps in your shop-vac.
  - AlexandrB 6y ago
    Most insects are very prone to dying of dehydration if their exoskeleton is pierced - it's how diatomaceous earth works. My best guess with how vacuums kill insects is small nicks to the exoskeleton from flying debris causing eventual death. I've never vacuumed up an insect or spider and seen it come out alive.

sokoloff 6y ago

> trapping and using dental floss to tie tracking devices to the hornets What? That seems crazy (and cool) to be able to create a tracking device light enough for a hornet to fly and still have enough battery to transmit even a periodic chirp.

jdndbfbf 6y ago
The probably don't fly very far from their nest. https://youtube.com/watch?v=3sX7bmNv10c https://youtube.com/watch?v=3sX7bmNv10c
- vvG94KbDUtRa 6y ago
  on the contrary, these things can roam up to 5 miles from their nests
snypher 6y ago
It is pretty cool tech. One thing I noticed is the battery is depleting from the time it's ordered; probably not a lot of room for a power switch. This one is 3x11mm and weighs 0.15g; https://atstrack.com/tracking-products/transmitters/product-transmitters.aspx?serie=T15 https://atstrack.com/tracking-products/transmitters/product-...
- TomK32 6y ago
  Isn't a simple strip of plastics to isolate the battery a common "power switch"?
  - wl 6y ago
    That'd probably be a good solution if the transmitter didn't need weatherproofing. I suppose adhesive film could be placed over the gap after removing the tab, though.
  - Johnny555 6y ago
    I doubt they use a socket that would allow the battery to be isolated, it's probably directly soldered in for weight and reliability. Otherwise they could just ship the battery uninstalled and let the user plug it in when he gets it. A weight of 0.15g doesn't give a lot of room for extra components like a battery socket.

ReptileMan 6y ago

2020. We have cazadores now. Have deathclaws been spotted too? Asking for a friend.

Frost1x 6y ago

Those protective suits look like something from a science fiction work. It even looks like a cell shaded rendering at second glance. I guess these hornets earned their title.

Exmoor 6y ago

It makes me a little nauseous to think about all the resources going to tracking down these insects, but this is truly an area where an ounce of prevention is worth many pounds of cure. The scope of North America's invasive species problem is enormous. For many folks in urban areas, it's possible that you might go your whole day only encountering one native bird species (American Crow), but a whole host of invasive species (Rock Pigeon, House Sparrows, European Starlings). History shows that early, active intervention can pay enormous dividends. For example, Alberta remains the only area in North America without non-native rats due to a major interventions: https://www.alberta.ca/history-of-rat-control-in-alberta.aspx https://www.alberta.ca/history-of-rat-control-in-alberta.asp...

jameshart 6y ago
‘All the resources’ make you nauseous? Seems like a weird reaction. Washington State department of agriculture’s budget is public information; they spend about a quarter of a billion dollars a year on all their programs. I can’t imagine this particular operation is making much of a dent in that overall spend. According to the captions of those photographs, they have entomologists and pest control specialists on staff already. Salaries are also public. Sven Spichinger, shown in one of those pictures, Managing Entomologist, is on $87,000 a year - whether he’s hunting for murder hornets or not, presumably. There are three different levels of ‘Pest Biologist’ job in the department. It kind of looks like this is a project that is taking up the time of a few people who they already had on staff, to deal with exactly this kind of problem. Does all government spending make you nauseous, or only when it’s visibly helping?
- dimitrios1 6y ago
  Now how much money we spend eating out when we could be saving by cooking large meals and eating leftovers, that makes me nauseous.
  - Klinky 6y ago
    If you're cooking anything with meat or imported produce, you're still damaging the environment, regardless of where it's cooked. Also your leftovers need to be put into something(often plastic) and stored in a refrigerated or frozen environment(electric/carbon costs), then reheated(electric/carbon cost). If you get tired of eating the same thing after 3 days and the rest rots away in your fridge, you've just created a ton of waste, or if you think to yourself you're going to spend 3 hours doing weekly meal-prep, but then flake out and don't do it, you just wasted everything. Some people are just terrible chefs or do not have the energy for it after working 50 - 60 hours in the week. Also you could make a case that large houses with nice kitchens also have environmental costs to build and maintain, and living in small apartments with communal kitchens or restaurants nearby is better.

ethbr0 6y ago

1994: We'll need airtight space suits for an Ebola outbreak. 2020: Surgical masks are a bit much to expect people to wear during a pandemic, Ebola has been circulating in Congo since 2014, and we'll need airtight space suits for a murder hornet outbreak. Truly, the 90s were a simpler time.

umvi 6y ago
Had we all been wearing surgical masks in public since the 90s, probably well over a million lives would have been saved by now from flu deaths alone. Basically, since the 90s we've put a much much higher value on human life. I expect mask usage to extend far beyond covid and handshaking to cease being a cultural greeting.
- petertodd 6y ago
  Why do you think that? COVID-19 has become more infectious over the course of the pandemic, with a strain that results in higher viral loads becoming predominant: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32697968/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32697968/ It's hard to compare across countries. But mask-wearing Japan and South Korea have higher rates of flu and pneumonia deaths than the US/Canada/Europe: https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/influenza-pneumonia/by-country/ https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/influenza... As surgical masks are much less than 100% effective even in ideal conditions, let alone actual wear, it wouldn't be surprising if more usage of them would just be an evolutionary pressure for flu to have higher viral output. Quite similar to how widespread use of less than 100% effective anti-bacterial agents just results in bacteria evolving resistance, reducing the usefulness of those agents for the most vulnerable part of the population who need them most.
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    > It's hard to compare across countries. But mask-wearing Japan and South Korea have higher rates of flu and pneumonia deaths than the US/Canada/Europe Possibly confounded by disparate population densities. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density#Density_of_the_most_populous_countries https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_depend...

mrfusion 6y ago

Remember when killer bees were the big scare? They were moving north. Everyone was worried. Whatever happened with that? I haven’t heard about them in years.

petertodd 6y ago
They're still a problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4ldpyIE5t4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4ldpyIE5t4 Interestingly, that video suggests that some beekeepers actually prefer the aggressive, "africanized", bees as they can be more productive than less aggressive bees in the right situation. But they're a public health hazard, so most beekeepers choose to euthanize more aggressive hives to deliberately breed calmer, safer, bees. This video also suggests that the high level of aggression wasn't optimal in at least some areas, so it's being evolved out and the bees are becoming less aggressive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psBomn2cPNw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psBomn2cPNw
- lostlogin 6y ago
  > most beekeepers choose to euthanize more aggressive hives to deliberately breed calmer, safer, bees. I wander why they don’t just requeen?
  - petertodd 6y ago
    IIUC workers (or at least worker larvae) can become queens under the right conditions, so it's more likely for the undesirable genes to be removed if the entire hive is euthanized. Also, in the case of that video, IIRC having the still aggressive workers in the locations available to that beekeeper wouldn't be desirable, even if later generations were calmer.
    - i_cannot_hack 6y ago
      It's not about the queens, it's about the drones (male bees). The workers only start laying eggs if the hive goes without a queen for several weeks, and either way the eggs they lay are unfertilized and therefore cannot be raised into new queens. So requeening it is certain to work in that regard. However, unless you euthanize whole hive, the aggressive drones will continue to live for a while and can mate with queens in neighbouring hives and spread the aggressive genes that way. So there is an advantage to euthanizing the whole hive instead of requeening it.

hikerclimb 6y ago

Hopefully they murder humans

luminati 6y ago

Calling it Asian is racist /s

dang 6y ago
Please don't do this here.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

hcurtiss 6y ago

I wonder why they didn't use an insecticide on the nest. The exterminator I hired used a powder on the entry to our attic and the Yellowjackets carried it into the nest and it wiped out the whole thing brilliantly (and we sealed the hole). A targeted application would require very little product. With a powder, it would also kill any insects that got away, and it could trace/damage other nests if the hornet moved to another colony. It seems to me a vacuum would be less thorough, and I would think they'd want to be very thorough in this instance, maybe even to the point of doing both.

datameta 6y ago
It seems most likely that they wanted to avoid killing the hornets. Perhaps to study them and find out which native Japanese population of hornets they came from in order to stem the flow of this invasive species. Could even be simply to preserve life.
- MauranKilom 6y ago
  The hornets in that tube look very dead to me.
  - datameta 6y ago
    The hornets had been put on ice which lowers their metabolism to a state of stupor but they recover from this as soon as their temperature goes back up. Another common technique for making stinging insects docile during handling is using smoke to calm a beehive's alertness response through inhibiting their ability to detect pheromones that signal danger.

whatsmyusername 6y ago

Murder hornets are the species that in Japan you don't call an exterminator, you call the police. They're that nasty.

forgotmypw17 6y ago

Universal rhyme would dictate that machine intelligence is learning our behavior and one day apply it to us when it is in charge. All children eventually become stronger than their parents, and most parents reap what they sow, and are treated a combination of how they treated their parents and their children. In this case, our ancestors is all the other DNA-based life on earth, and our children are silicon machines. Now, think about how we are treating the animals and also the machines (yelling at, cursing out, smashing, being very impatient with, expecting perfection) The picture is downright scary.

praptak 6y ago

"Washington State Department of Agriculture workers, illuminated by red lamps, vacuum a nest of Asian giant hornets from a tree in Blaine" Interesting. Why do they use red lamps?

rory096 6y ago
Red light is typically used at night in order to avoid destroying the eye's rhodopsin, which helps with night vision and takes at least 30 minutes of non-exposure to blue light to fully replenish. You'll see pilots and astronomers using red flashlights for this reason. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodopsin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodopsin
Davidzheng 6y ago
I think hornets probably don't react to red light. I think bee researchers also use red lights in labs when extracting bees so they don't become active in the presence of light.

doc_gunthrop 6y ago

Murder hornets are a real threat to honey bee hives. A handful of hornets can take out a hive of thousands. What's interesting is the way that honey bees defend against them. A bunch of bees surround each hornet, then they intensify the flapping of their wings, which then generates enough heat to kill the hornet. In other words, the hornets are cooked alive.

_joel 6y ago
That's only an adaptation that some bees have. European ones, for example, do not have that adaptation so carnage ensues.
- doc_gunthrop 6y ago
  Yes, it's worthwhile to note that it's an adaptation that evolved regionally.
bgentry 6y ago
It’s worth noting that the honeybee defense mechanism you describe is unique to Asian honeybees, which evolved this defense specifically because of the native Asian giant hornet / murder hornet. European honeybees, which are used in most of the world, have no such defense mechanism and would indeed be helplessly slaughtered by these hornets. I’d definitely advocate watching some YouTube footage about these creatures, they’re fascinating.
- pm90 6y ago
  Why don't we cross-breed European with Asian honeybees? Or just start using Asian honeybees?
  - tpetry 6y ago
    Isn‘t that exactly hoe a special very aggressive breed was created? They breed two different ones, both not aggressive but with interesting capabilities and somehow they created an aggressive one?

11235813213455 6y ago

I know bees are fundamental but I think we should adjust ourselves along with nature, and not try to always dictate things. We can live without honey, eat fruits instead (for which wasps and hornets participate also in pollination), they even provide better nutrients

macintux 6y ago
Ignoring the threat that these hornets pose to people, standing back and allowing our honeybee population to be wiped out would have incalculable effects across the ecosystem. They're a major pollinator. Sure, there are others, but why would we risk adding more catastrophe when we've already wiped out such a huge number of insects?
TulliusCicero 6y ago
> I know bees are fundamental but I think we should adjust ourselves along with nature, and not try to always dictate things. Nature? You realize this almost certainly happened because of international travel/trade, right?
- 11235813213455 6y ago
  > "this happened" You mean hornets? Of course I know, but we can still adapt our consumption mode, honeybees are for what? honey mostly. We can also reduce planes travel, that wouldn't hurt as well
  - TulliusCicero 6y ago
    > You mean hornets? No, I mean this specific species of hornet suddenly appearing thousands of kilometers away. That wasn't nature, that was mankind's intervention. Getting rid of them is hardly us 'dictating' things, it's restoring the natural order.
    - 11235813213455 6y ago
      > restoring the natural order that sounds weird, of course human influence massively things, but you can't just decide on how to restore the "natural" state like this, it may be even worse by trying to do something brutally. The good honeybees vs the bad hornets or wasps. It's much more complex. There are articles about how wild bees do a better job at pollination https://www.google.com/search?q=wild+bees+vs+honey+bees+pollination https://www.google.com/search?q=wild+bees+vs+honey+bees+poll..., wasps similarly play a huge role, for example with fruit trees (figs is the best example)

emcq 6y ago

Blaine Washington is right along the Canadian border and next to many islands. The islands are sparsely inhabited and infrequently visited by humans it makes me wonder if maybe there is still a colony out there. It seems like a difficult area to do containment so glad they tracked these down. It looks like in 2019 Vancouver island (which is huge) had a colony get eradicated, but otherwise haven't seen much else reported. https://www.ontario.ca/page/asian-giant-hornets https://www.ontario.ca/page/asian-giant-hornets

lawwantsin17 6y ago

HOW IS THIS NEWS?

mastax 6y ago
Invasive species can have huge effects on agriculture and other human activities. Giant murder hornets can be scary even beyond these rational concerns. The presence of a new invasive species can thus be important news as the spread of those species can effect human activities.

sabujp 6y ago

That's some awesome PPE, we should just release murder hornets everywhere.

Bud 6y ago

Wait, they destroyed Mitch McConnell's office? That's great news!

ChuckMcM 6y ago

I find the bit about affixing a tracking devices to hornets with dental floss part of the amazing bit. Some seriously tiny radios these days.

yawz 6y ago

I’m a beekeeper and every passing year it becomes harder to keep my colonies alive. I’m really glad that we’re taking this threat seriously, because we don’t need one more problem on our list of things that kill our bees. While I’m at it, please allow me to remind everyone that there are thousands of solitary bee species in the world. They are the ones that go extinct or in real danger compared to our honey bees. There are many struggling beekeepers like me in the world, and we’re doing our best to keep our bees alive. But thousands of species are without keepers and they are dying. Please be gentle to the nature. Let them live. (Edit: wondering how you can help, here's what I humbly suggested below in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24889023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24889023)

RyanOD 6y ago
In addition, do what you can to support bees. Here are some simple suggestions from Nat Geo. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/05/150524-bees-pollinators-animals-science-gardens-plants/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/05/150524-bees-...
- coliveira 6y ago
  This is an example of typical modern thinking that believes we can solve problems such as global warming and bee extinction by doing individual actions. This is completely nonsense. Either we do this as a public policy or there is no solution.
  - NateEag 6y ago
    Your comment is an example of typical programmer thinking that says "only a perfect solution is worth releasing". I have been guilty of that error countless times. An individual's actions will not solve a society's woes, but they don't need to. If they help a little bit where they are, they can be worth doing. Furthermore, individuals trying to help does not preclude larger-scale solutions. The people attempting individual actions could even contribute to the larger-scale or policy-based solutions.

jonplackett 6y ago

I was curious about this and found this YouTube video. https://youtu.be/EZ1eAM8CChc https://youtu.be/EZ1eAM8CChc 30,000 bees killed by just 30 hornets in an hour or so. The bees just have no defence against them at all. Brutal.

i2shar 6y ago
Also fascinating, a related video on bees killing a hornet: https://youtu.be/UNroEwFxh6I https://youtu.be/UNroEwFxh6I
- jonplackett 6y ago
  Yeah I saw this too - I guess those bees must have evolved with hornets as a predator and have developed that defence. But the bees in the west haven't and so they don't have any behaviour to help them.
  - chrisgd 6y ago
    European bees being destroyed, Asian bees killing the hornet.
    - jonplackett 6y ago
      Maybe we’ll have to get some Asian honey bees.

jariel 6y ago

This is a good step and we should take this seriously, it can be done. Did you know that the province of Alberta has no rats? Literally. No. Rats. It takes a serious, concerted and systematic effort but it can be done. [1] Much like we're still not doing a very good job at COVID (i.e. still applying crude measures because it's all we can do right now whereas we could be taking cues from Taiwan etc.), we can 'get good' at these things with good leadership. [1] https://www.alberta.ca/history-of-rat-control-in-alberta.aspx https://www.alberta.ca/history-of-rat-control-in-alberta.asp...

ZitchDog 6y ago

This really seems like a great opportunity to use a CRISPR gene drive to take these things out.

SoSoRoCoCo 6y ago

I was kayaking on the John Day river in northern central Oregon in 2017 and ran into a moderately sized swarm of these hornets crawling on the mud eating other bugs. Definitely been well over two years since they showed up in that part of Oregon.

honkycat 6y ago

I always find the anti-environmentalist position that pops up on HN interesting. For a technical audience, they are amazingly unaware of "Systems Thinking". Saying "MEH, there are other pollinators" is lazy thinking. Our ecosystem is a vast web of interconnections. You cannot predict how one HUGELY important species being destroyed will affect the rest of our ecosystem. Furthermore: People use honey bees for honey ( duh ). But they are more useful than just that: people drive honey bee colonies around to crops in order to pollinate them. If we don't have honey bees, we do not have crops. There is no mystical "other pollinator" that is going to fill the niche of the honey bee. Honey bees are uniquely industrialized and failure to eliminate the Murder Hornet threat to honey bees will have HUGE implications. What are you proposing exactly? We stand back and lose all of our biodiversity because we have to pay a few conservationists 1/5 of a mediocre SAAS CEO's salary? Give me a break. Humanity does not stand on its own, we still need nature to sustain ourselves. "When the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, the last river poisoned, only then will we realize that one cannot eat money." And outside of economic and survival concerns: Nature is IRREPLACEABLE. Once it is dead it is dead forever. How could you honestly take this position? What do you find valuable? What do you find beautiful? What do you live for?

vinbreau 6y ago
Reminds me of an old adage I heard in high school: If you take the frogs out of the environment, you don't have the same environment minus frogs, you have an entirely new ecosystem.
- honkycat 6y ago
  The classic example is the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone: https://sites.tufts.edu/tuftsgetsgreen/2018/02/27/wolves-change-ecosystem-and-geography-in-yellowstone/ https://sites.tufts.edu/tuftsgetsgreen/2018/02/27/wolves-cha...
  - tzs 6y ago
    Wolves in Yellowstone are a "keystone species" [1]. A year ago, there was a fascinating episode of "Nature" on PBS about keystone species. It's available for free online streaming here [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_species https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_species [2] https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/the-serengeti-rules-41dfru/20105/?button=fullepisode https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/the-serengeti-rules-41dfru/2...

bibelo 6y ago

you guys in US are doomed

hikerclimber 6y ago

good. they will come back though. they are like pests.

lai 6y ago

This should be an Among Us crewmate task.

octoberfranklin 6y ago

Dude where can I get one of those awesome suits?

WalterBright 6y ago

In the Pacific Northwest, we have a couple other slow moving ecological train wrecks. The first is the himalayan blackberry, an invasive species that kills everything else and completely dominates where it has taken root. It grows everywhere. A similar story for the scotch broom. And the english ivy, which is killing the trees. All of these are everywhere and very difficult to kill.

giantg2 6y ago

Kill 'em all! (I'm a beekeeper)

galaxyLogic 6y ago

Who you gonna call? Bee-Busters!

SimeVidas 6y ago

How many nests are there in USA? Do they have a number?

vmchale 6y ago

Intense pictures from this story.

racl101 6y ago

Good. Wasps are A-holes. They do not enrich our lives. All they do is attack. They brought this on themselves.

davexunit 6y ago

Humans create a problem, try to solve it with human effort, and either prolong the problem or create a bigger one. We try to kill starlings and yet they are still here, all we've done is waste time and resources murdering them. We try to kill japanese knotweed by pulling them out of the soil or by applying herbicide and the knotweed spreads further because it thrives in a disturbed environment. Asian longhorned beetle, gyspy moths, garlic mustard, etc. Whether plant or animal, it's all the same. All wasted efforts because we're collectively unable to think on the same timescale that nature does as it works to achieve equilibrium again after the disturbance.

EricE 6y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqTubMeydDE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqTubMeydDE His whole channel is also excellent.