Peak 2020: Murder hornet update

[litebright]

This has been percolating around the news because Washington State's Dept. of Ag did a press conference recently on how they found and took out their first murder hornet nest.

They trapped hornets, glued teeny little Bluetooth sensors to them and let them go so they could track them back to the nest. And it worked! 

I'm linking to the press release, because they put up a huge stash of photos and video and they are FASCINATING. Link to the photos is in the release. Their suits look like something Homer Simpson would wear in the power plant, lol. 


agr.wa.gov/about-wsda/news-and-media-relations/news-releases?article=31892

[dontlook]

That’s more than enough, 2020.

[Patsy Baloney]

I thought they looked like they belonged in ET

[isabel]

98!? How big was the fucking nest? I want to see what it looks like when they open the tree. Fascinating.

eta: Oh, they just posted those pictures! There's a good one here: agriculture.app.box.com/s/uvk3gf2ri1v005almojwkxewpoh55h4w/file/735996067085

Man, I thought these things made normal wasps nests. Clearly not.

etaa: It's over a foot long!

agriculture.app.box.com/s/uvk3gf2ri1v005almojwkxewpoh55h4w/file/735997876331

[schrodinger]

Oct 30, 2020 12:53:54 GMT -5 litebright said:

This has been percolating around the news because Washington State's Dept. of Ag did a press conference recently on how they found and took out their first murder hornet nest.

They trapped hornets, glued teeny little Bluetooth sensors to them and let them go so they could track them back to the nest. And it worked! 

I'm linking to the press release, because they put up a huge stash of photos and video and they are FASCINATING. Link to the photos is in the release. Their suits look like something Homer Simpson would wear in the power plant, lol. 


agr.wa.gov/about-wsda/news-and-media-relations/news-releases?article=31892

This is local to me. There was an article about a week ago that showed them tying a tracker to the hornet with dental floss because gluing trackers didn't work.  The size of those things is terrifying!

www.bellinghamherald.com/news/local/article246397190.html

[litebright]

They also posted a short video from the tree: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT4BNlh1nrc

[InBetweenDays]

It is so cool to me that they were able to attach trackers to them. I'm guessing this wasn't the only nest so hopefully they can find any others. F yeah science!

[isabel]

Oct 30, 2020 13:13:20 GMT -5 litebright said:

They also posted a short video from the tree: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT4BNlh1nrc

I watched this and the next one that YouTube brought up was this guy removing an absolutely massive yellowjacket nest from inside the soffit of a house and now I am horrified at what might be lurking under the siding and eaves of my house. lol

[wesleycrusher]

I saw a comment online that said the suits look like shaved teletubbies and it's all I think when I see the pictures now.

[mockingbird]

Oct 30, 2020 13:47:46 GMT -5 wesleycrusher said:

I saw a comment online that said the suits look like shaved teletubbies and it's all I think when I see the pictures now.

My kids say they look like the Among Us characters.

There have been lots of posts in my beekeeping groups about them. They’re awful

[Deleted]

Oct 30, 2020 13:28:36 GMT -5 isabel said:

Oct 30, 2020 13:13:20 GMT -5 litebright said:

They also posted a short video from the tree: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT4BNlh1nrc

I watched this and the next one that YouTube brought up was this guy removing an absolutely massive yellowjacket nest from inside the soffit of a house and now I am horrified at what might be lurking under the siding and eaves of my house. lol

That was not a YouTube rabbit hole that I wanted to down today, but yet I did. :::runsscreaming:::

[Patsy Baloney]

Oct 30, 2020 13:28:36 GMT -5 isabel said:

Oct 30, 2020 13:13:20 GMT -5 litebright said:

They also posted a short video from the tree: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT4BNlh1nrc

I watched this and the next one that YouTube brought up was this guy removing an absolutely massive yellowjacket nest from inside the soffit of a house and now I am horrified at what might be lurking under the siding and eaves of my house. lol

When we moved into our house, by the pantry, I always smelled the faint smell of maple/honey. Just something sweet. 

An ordinary person would probably think, "Gee, I'm sure the previous owners spilled something. I should find that and clean that up."

But I thought, "Oh no. There must be a bee hive in here. I bet it's massive. I bet we moved into a hive and this house is the bees'."

FTR - still no bee hive in the walls, lol.

[isabel]

Oct 30, 2020 15:18:28 GMT -5 Patsy Baloney said:

Oct 30, 2020 13:28:36 GMT -5 isabel said:

I watched this and the next one that YouTube brought up was this guy removing an absolutely massive yellowjacket nest from inside the soffit of a house and now I am horrified at what might be lurking under the siding and eaves of my house. lol

When we moved into our house, by the pantry, I always smelled the faint smell of maple/honey. Just something sweet. 

An ordinary person would probably think, "Gee, I'm sure the previous owners spilled something. I should find that and clean that up."

But I thought, "Oh no. There must be a bee hive in here. I bet it's massive. I bet we moved into a hive and this house is the bees'."

FTR - still no bee hive in the walls, lol.

This is cracking me up. lollll

We have some stone facing to the left of our front door and there were wasps going into a gap this summer. We sealed the whole thing up and filled every crack. Haven't seen a wasp by the front door in months. But after watching that, I'm terrified they're now living inside the wall right by our front entry and will somehow come exploding out into our house or something. 

Watching that was not a good idea. 

[isabel]

Oct 30, 2020 15:15:13 GMT -5 @sameoldstory said:

Oct 30, 2020 13:28:36 GMT -5 isabel said:

I watched this and the next one that YouTube brought up was this guy removing an absolutely massive yellowjacket nest from inside the soffit of a house and now I am horrified at what might be lurking under the siding and eaves of my house. lol

That was not a YouTube rabbit hole that I wanted to down today, but yet I did. :::runsscreaming:::

You're welcome. 

[pixy0stix]

I already feel like I'm in the Hunger Games. All those tracker jackers just made it worse.

[InBetweenDays]

@@@@
A few years ago DD was going to bed in her loft bed. She said she heard someone breathing. I climbed in her bed and heard this buzzing coming from a vent that was right next to the head of her bed. I carefully opened the vent and it was a big yellow jacket nest! We quickly closed it up, closed her door, and had her sleep in the guest room until H could vacuum it out and put new screens over the entrance to the vent.

[froggyfarts2point0]

The WA Department of Agriculture just posted a blog detailing the nest excavation and recovery of even more hornets, including larvae and more queens. It includes photos and links to download videos of their process.

wastatedeptag.blogspot.com/2020/10/AGHNestRemoval.html?m=1

[aprilsails]

Oct 30, 2020 13:28:36 GMT -5 isabel said:

Oct 30, 2020 13:13:20 GMT -5 litebright said:

They also posted a short video from the tree: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT4BNlh1nrc

I watched this and the next one that YouTube brought up was this guy removing an absolutely massive yellowjacket nest from inside the soffit of a house and now I am horrified at what might be lurking under the siding and eaves of my house. lol

We moved into a new build home last year and for whatever reason they completely forgot to point two bricks at the front of the house right at the soffit on the porch. We told the builder right away but he didn’t try to do anything about it until this year. We spent the entire summer trying to keep wasps out from the soffit. We put in foam, hung fake wasps nests, etc. Eventually the masons came over to fix it and freaked out about the amount of wasps flying around. We spent two mornings sitting on the porch from dawn to 10am spraying every wasp that came in and out. The builder had to pull down the full soffit for our porch so he could fix the issue and we could get rid of the nest. It was 8”x12”. So freaking big.

[isabel]

aprilsails, shudder. That is horrifying.

[mrsukyankee]

aprilsails , and my reaction

[basilosaurus]

Just seeing a bee can give me frightful nightmares. This is atrocious. And reminds me yet again I live in a part of the world where these things live. And apparently they cannot get epi-pens here.

[schrodinger]

The local paper today had some more information on what they found when they started to dissect the nest:

Additional live hornets also were found in the nest, even though scientists previously believed they had killed them all after pumping carbon dioxide gas into the tree on Saturday, Oct. 24, as part of their work to destroy the nest, and then again on Thursday, Oct. 29, after they opened up the tree to study the nest.

“They do seem fairly resistant” to the gas, said Karla Salp, spokesperson for the state agency, adding that the hornets may have managed to live because they emerged from their protective cells in the nest after carbon dioxide was pumped into the tree.

The Asian giant hornets were more resistant to the gas than bald-faced hornets, which died when entomologists tried to sedate them with the gas during the summer as they experimented with attaching trackers to them in preparation for the fight against Asian giant hornets, according to Salp.

www.bellinghamherald.com/news/local/article246807712.html

They are going to be really hard to eradicate, but hopefully they can take what they've learned from this nest and adapt how they deal with the next.