Giant Asian killer hornets spotted in Washington State

Sightings of the Asian Giant Hornet has prompted many people to fear the likelihood of the nasty insect establishing itself in the country, which could potentially devastate the bee population.

Take Ted McFall for example. He has decades of experience of beekeeping but was not expecting this.

In November, McFall had done a checkup on a hive near Custer, Washington, according to The New York Times, however, he noticed that something was wrong. The bees that he was going to tend to were all dead with no trace of the culprit at all. He later thought about the recent sightings of the Asian Giant Hornet and put two and two together. 

Of the incident, McFall said that “I couldn’t wrap my head around what could have done that,” not suspecting the “Murder Hornets” until quite some time afterward probably because of the location at hand. 

The Asian Giant Hornet is the world’s largest hornet and is native to Eastern Asia. 

The New York Times noted in their story about the insect that it kills on average about 50 people per year, pointing out that their sting is like no other. 

Beekeeper and entomologist Conrad Bérubé from the Nanaimo area of Vancouver got to experience this first hand. After a crew was able to find a hive on Vancouver Island, he was called to exterminate it and rid the ecosystem of the dangers that possibly could have happened. 

“It was like having red-hot thumbtacks being driven into my flesh,” he said, per The New York Times. 

Although Bérubé came well prepared for what he set out to do, it was to no avail — he had on a pair of shorts and sweatpants underneath his bee suit and still couldn’t stop himself from getting stung at least seven times, and worse. The New York Times reported that he even drew blood from some of the stings. 

Bérubé succeeded in his goal to eliminate the hive, despite it all. Of his experience with the insect, he admitted that the stings he got from the Asian Giant Hornet were the worst pain that he ever felt, adding that the leg pain he suffered from as a result of the encounter he had with the Asian Giant Hornets was similar flu-like symptoms. 

State officials also disclosed that he was successful at providing a leg of the insect, shipping it to Japan, and making it possible for him to provide a sample Nanaimo nest too. 

Meanwhile, people like the entomologist Chris Looney are setting makeshift traps for the hornet in an industrial park in Blaine, according to The New York Times. 

Looney noted that he and others are planning to set hundreds of traps over the next several months in order to track the insect and to discover other unknown hives in the future. 

Seen below is a video of this lethal hornet killing a mouse.

Coyote Peterson is a YouTube vlogger who uploads videos of himself getting stung by insects. In the episode below, he catches and gets stung by the Asian Killer Hornet