First attempt at tracking Asian giant hornet fails, but state still hopeful
Oct 2, 2020, 2:54 PM
State entomologists captured a live Asian giant hornet for the first time this week, and attempted to tag it so it could be followed back to its nest.
The entomologists spent the week in a neighborhood east of Blaine, Wash., where about a half dozen Asian giant hornets were found in the past week.
Sven-Erik Spichiger, managing entomologist with the Washington State Department of Agriculture, said in a press conference that these new sightings mean there are at least two nests in Whatcom County. The other hornet activity this summer mostly occurred near Birch Bay, too far away from Blaine for the typical hornet to fly. Hornets have also been spotted in Custer and Bellingham.
“Most of our resources right now are being spent every day looking around the Birch Bay area, and now this new site a little east of Blaine,” Spichiger said.
State traps first Asian giant hornet near Birch Bay, plans nest eradication
The plan was to glue a tracking device to the captured hornet’s leg so that its nest could be located and subsequently destroyed.
“Everything actually went very well; the tags functioned properly, our devices for tracking them — which literally are cell phone apps — also functioned properly,” Spichiger said. “Unfortunately, the glue did not dry properly, and the tag slid off of it as we were waiting to release the hornet, and unfortunately its wings came into contact with the glue, rendering it unable to fly.”
They tried tying a tag on the hornet’s leg after that, but while the hornet was still able to walk, flying was not possible.
“Unfortunately, she was not able to take flight, [but] we absolutely do believe we are going to get more live hornets,” Spichiger said. “We have peppered the area with 30 live traps, and with the number of sightings we got as we started walking the neighborhood, we are extremely confident that at least throughout the next couple of weeks, we are probably going to snag one if not more of them.”
Entomologists had initially hoped to have the nests located and eradicated by now. Over the summer, Spichiger stated that the goal was to have the work accomplished by mid-September, with a “drop-dead date” of October. That’s so that the nests can be gone before the hornets’ fall mating season produces a whole new generation of hornets.
Also occurring in the fall is the hornets’ “slaughter phase,” when they are at their most vicious. The hornets are attacking Whatcom County honeybees, including hives placed by the state for observation of Asian giant hornet behavior.
“We don’t think we have a huge number of nests out there, but the few that we do have do seem to be readily active and available to attack honeybee hives,” Spichiger said.
Honeybees are not native to Washington, but the invasive visitors are also going after local creatures.
“They’re also attacking our native wasps, yellow jackets, and things like that, so to see them doing that, that means that they’re going to have an impact on our ecosystem past honeybees,” Spichiger said. “So that was kind of the bad news confirmed this week … to me, that’s the bigger story here, that we have now confirmed they’re attacking some of our native pollinators.”
Whatcom County residents are encouraged to set up their own live traps. Click here for a tutorial on DIY bottle traps.
Report any sightings and turn any captures over to the Department of Agriculture. If you are a beekeeper and your hive is under attack from Asian giant hornets, call 360-902-1880.
