Nest Zero - Murder Hornets in Washington State

[Music] [Music] [Music] as i drove up i had a bad feeling in my stomach and when i showed up there were dead bees everywhere they just showed up last winter the new threat that we're facing this year that no one's ever had to face in in the americas the murder hornet they can be extremely dangerous i just felt this pain right there on the chest i got stung four times across the thighs two of those grew blood like having red hot thumbnails driven into the flesh it's way more intense it was like being hit by a two by four and the pain just persisted 16 hours after that there's a necrosis associated with the sting which means the flesh around the sting will start to die and then this can lead to other problems like organ failure there's a wasp nest up there that the hornet was attacking made quite a loud hum i knew it was something different farmers pay good money to people like me to put our honeybees out there and if we don't have bees then we're not going to have food we don't really know what the ultimate impact could be on on honeybees in our state or our country but we're not going to take the risk especially because we know it will kill hives if that doesn't happen and they start to build up populations then then it gets sort of away from us and we don't know what that time frame is if we're able to stop this thing and keep it isolated right here and wipe them out right now while we can that's our best bet because if we're not able to and it spreads then the chances of us getting rid of this thing is going to be slim asian giant hornets are frequently around two inches long with a three inch wingspan and a quarter inch stinger capable of punching through normal clothing and even beekeeper suits they pose a unique threat to people and particularly western honeybees [Music] it's late summer 2019 the largest hornet species in the world has officially arrived in north america that august three unusually large looking hornets are found in the canadian town of nanaimo on british columbia's vancouver island off the coast of mainland canada in september they were identified as asian giant hornets and three more were found in the vicinity of a park local beekeepers were able to quickly find and eradicate the robbins park nest according to british columbia's lead beekeeper paul van that was successfully destroyed and therefore there is no further reinfestation taking place at least that's what we hope there is a chance that that is successful the situation here on the mainland is of course more complicated in november 2019 an asian giant hornet was spotted on the mainland in white rock canada a part of british columbia just north of washington state that december the first asian giant hornet was found in the u.s in blaine washington about 55 miles from the nanaimo nest but just a few miles from the canadian border see all that is beautiful honey all that is capped honey and all this under here is gonna be capped honey for local beekeeper ted mcfall the find explained what happened to one of his hives the month before and i just was looking at it thinking to myself what in the world could have slaughtered all these bees mcfall was confronted with a gruesome discovery while checking on his hives near the town of custer and when i showed up there were dead bees everywhere i had a bad feeling in my stomach whenever i saw just a dark area all over the ground in front of a hive and that's when i thought uh oh i think those are probably bees i wonder what happened and so whenever i got took a closer look that's when i noticed all these headless bees what the heck happened he keeps tens to hundreds of thousands of bees his family earns money from the honey and the beeswax we sell quite a bit of that a lot of people are looking for raw honey it's got all the enzymes and all the healthy things in it and also from farmers who pay him to host hives near their fields cultivated honeybees are widely used to pollinate certain crops increasing the yield for cherries blueberries and apples washington is the nation's leading producer of all three the asian giant hornet nicknamed the murder hornet is native to southern asia where it ranges from india to japan their thick armor makes the hornets invulnerable to stings from smaller insects japanese honeybees have learned ways to fight back forming a vibrating ball around the much larger predator that kills giant hornets with a buildup of heat and co2 honeybees in north america are defenseless against them our western honeybees have never seen anything like the asian giant hornet and they're not able to penetrate or hurt the asian giant hornet in any way and so the asian giant hornet just shows up with its with his giant mandibles and just lops off heads all it takes is one one chomp with his with the mandibles and the bee's head comes off the washington state department of agriculture was watching the situation closely unlike the invasive gypsy moth the state can't use aerial pesticide drops to specifically target the species no such pesticide exists for asian giant hornets they hoped the winter weather would kill off the queens and halt the invasion no such luck by mid-2020 it was clear they would have to find and eradicate all of the nests by hand [Music] [Applause] 0.9 of a mile due north from here they happened to find an asian giant order on the side of the road they think it was likely hit by a slow-moving vehicle and you know thank god that someone uh hit that asian giant hornet because she would have been able to create an entire nest and so here in these woods around here we there's a very good chance that there's other queens that are creating nests as we speak the state level agriculture agency launched a trapping and public awareness campaign in march of 2020. so i've set some asian giant hornet traps here i'm trying different types of baits this is the one that the government most recommends they recruited volunteers from several counties but the effort focused on whatcom county which borders canada so far the only place in the u.s where asian giant hornets are known to have been found volunteers put out traps by the hundreds and reported their fines here we have a couple yellow jackets often mistaking a native golden digger wasp or cicada killer for an invasive giant hornet oh yeah you write it ate it in may of 2020 a murder hornet queen was found in custer but there were confirmed sightings from the border area all the way down to bellingham where a woman stomped an asian giant hornet queen on her front porch the trapping effort started to really pay off when the agency got their first live specimens then they had to figure out how to track the hornets back to their nest we're going to try tagging a hornet we're going to hope the hornet does what hornets do which is to fly home and we're going to hope that the phones do what vikram wants them to do which is to help us find where that home is entomologist chris looney and his colleagues had limited success tracking hornets with custom-built bluetooth devices glued to their body but a radio tag tied on with dental floss turned out to be a winning combination it led researchers to the first asian giant hornet nest ever found in the united states in late october inside a hollow tree in a residential area in blaine they removed the nest and the hornets in the tree later confirming there were 76 newly emerged queens inside along with more than 100 suspected queens that were still developing all theoretically capable of creating their own nests and spawning hundreds more specimens were taken to the smithsonian biorepository to preserve the genetic signature of what is now known as nest zero protein for their young the hornets transition to slaughter mode in late summer and early fall [Music] when they hunt other insects in particular bees by early winter the queens disburse to a new area and shelter underground for the winter that's where they typically nest and part of what makes them dangerous to people an unlucky step or a wrong turn on a lawnmower can provoke a massive attack these asian giant hornets built a nest in the ground most of the time and it is the inadvertent and accidental disturbance of a nest that that is what provokes such a very strong defense response from these from these hornets asian giant hornets carry a toxic cocktail they inject significantly more venom per sting and can sting multiple times the venom can be necrotic damaging the flesh near the area of the sting more than other venomous insects even one sting can be fatal if someone is allergic most people allergic to wasps or hornets are not allergic to bees according to the cdc we are strongly recommending if you get multiple stings from an asian giant hornet nest that you seek medical attention entomologists say multiple stings can be life-threatening in humans whether they are allergic or not as a sufficient amount of venom can cause organ failure the species is also known for spraying venom into the eyes which can cause permanent damage to vision a washington state university study found that western washington and oregon could provide prime habitat if the hornets become firmly established even if washington finds and kills all the giant hornets in the evergreen state it will mean little if there are nests just north of the border a year after the nest was eradicated in nanaimo asian giant hornets have been spotted in several locations on mainland british columbia sightings continued after the nest was destroyed in washington in october of 2020 from white rock to aldergrove to langley there are hundreds of square kilometers which could contain nests the hornets can reportedly fly up to seven miles per day and 20 miles per hour we haven't sat down like run one through a flight mill or really tracked where they go and for how long and again we have no idea how far they go once they disperse so i think the best we can do with that is assume they have the ability to go pretty far if they want because they're big strong animals and and just be worried scientists don't know how asian giant hornets arrived in north america u.s customs intercepted about 80 thousand pests in 2019 hornets are considered a delicacy and raised for food in some parts of japan and are also used to make medicinal liquor there have been efforts to smuggle in the giant hornets before in the u.s and canada it was reported to me uh without too many details that somebody had brewed of these hornets in his suitcase and was intercepted at the vancouver international airport but entomologists think smuggling is an unlikely scenario the hornets could have easily hitched a ride on cargo being shipped to one or more of the many ports in the pacific northwest then taken flight from there every vehicle that is imported could harbor something in the tailpipe or underneath the hood or wheel well or whatever there's a sort of upper area that is designed for the hornets to go in there's a little plate here where we could open it up bring out the hornet and then we can come and hopefully retrieve them and track them home trapping efforts will continue in the u.s and be much more aggressive in canada in 2021 with an experimental lure developed by the usda's agricultural research service lab in washington entomologists are still hopeful they can prevent the massive stinging insects from establishing a permanent foothold in the pacific northwest but an unbelievable coincidence suggests even if we stop the invading insects this time it won't be the last time we have to push back just three months before the first asian giant hornets were found on vancouver island a different type of massive asian hornet was found in vancouver harbor in may of 2019 there was a report of a huge hornet that was caught and collected in vancouver harbor to make a long story short this turned out to be a sister species of the asian giant hornet indeed that is unusual but maybe not the problem with always these things is that we generally don't notice these things until finally we it draws our attention and we start looking although they could die out on their own they've already made it through one winter and established an unknown number of nesting sites for 2021 and chris looney says it could take years of surveillance and eradication efforts to keep the murder hornets from spreading further it is absolutely not too late to stop them the dense trapping that we've been able to do really says it's still just a whatcom county in british columbia and that gives us kind of a fighting chance having washingtonians engaged in this is going to be the key to our success [Music] you

Channel: TVW

Views: 930,601

Keywords: murder hornets, asian giant hornet, usda, hornet, bee, honey bee, bee sting, invasive, invasive species, Canada, Asian Hornet, Vancouver, B.C., beekeeper, honey, colony collapse, entomologist, discovery, smuggling, TVW, Inslee, Covid, washington state, United States, venom, sting, murder hornet sting, bee extinction, giant hornet, Japanese Giant Hornet, China, Honda, Washington State, Seattle, wasps, hornets, hives, allergy, allergic to bees, allergic reaction, hornut, hornit, Biden, DNR, kardashian, painful

Id: RPdeqwKbTCI

Length: 14min 40sec (880 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 28 2020