FIVE THINGS ABOUT ‘MURDER HORNETS’

The world’s largest hornet — the size of a matchbox — is known for invading honeybee

hives, decapitating all the bees and carrying the mangled

thoraxes back to feed their young. And they’re in a couple of places in British Columbia. They’re also nicknamed “yak-killer hornets” or “giant

sparrow bees.”

1

DEER FLIES ARE NOTHING

Conrad Bérubé, a beekeeper and entomologist in Nanaimo, described being stung by an Asian giant hornet as “like having red-hot thumb tacks being driven into my flesh.” The hornets primarily attack insects but will sting people

if threatened.

2

ARMOURED OUTFITS

Their quarter-inch stingers,

which can penetrate beekeeping suits, deploy a venom

potent enough to dissolve human flesh. Multiple stings can cause the nervous system to shut down. They kill 30 to 40

people each year in Japan.

3

CATCH ’N’ KILL

Scientists are now hunting for the insects, whose queens can grow to two inches long, in hopes of rounding them up before they become rooted and destroy bee populations crucial to crop pollination. The Asian giant hornets have distinctive qualities: large orange and yellow heads with teardrop eyes, black and yellow striped abdomens and papery wings that span up to three inches.

4

BEE HEADS

A colony of Asian giant hornets can kill 30,000 bees in a few hours. The attack begins after a scout finds a bee colony and signals the gang with a pheromone. Worker hornets chew the bees into gooey “meatballs” before carrying the protein-heavy remains back to their young. Mated queens emerge between mid-March and May and eat sap for energy

to start a new colony.

5

DO YOU BAKE OR BOIL?

Asian giant hornets may have come to North America in a ship’s ballast or in a product transported from Asia, or may have been brought here to be cultivated as a food source. Some people in Asian countries eat the meaty hornets, and their juice is sometimes used as a performanceenhancing supplement.