(PHOTO: Courtesy Washington State Department of Agriculture)
This year’s plan to track and eliminate so-called “Murder Hornets” in Washington comes with a lot of detail and with confidence in the efforts to eradicate the invasive pests.
The standard of three years with no detections means the Washington State Department of Agriculture can’t declare Asian Giant Hornets totally eradicated until at least 2025, but in the meantime, your help to find them is again requested because state entomologist, Sven Spichiger, says it was “citizen scientists” who helped them detect and eliminate three nests last year – all within 2 miles of each other just east of Blaine. “So we are still in a very tightly compact and confined area,” Spichiger says, “which leads us into this season with a bit of optimism that it has not spread to multiple counties and does not appear to be throughout the rest of Whatcom County, which is really good news.”
Those “citizen scientists” are being asked to help again both by setting traps of their own and through the “Adopt A Wasp” program, under which they’re asked to allow paper wasp nests on their property to remain to see if they attract Asian Giant Hornets looking to attack the wasps.
Spichiger says they need to learn how far queens can disperse and establish new nests after they mate in the fall, so WSDA is partnering with scientists in South Korea, where these giant hornets are genetically-linked, to follow queens there and give them a better idea of how wide of a hornet trapping area they need here. He says now they know the hornets can travel up to 2 kilometers because they’ve been able to track them from their foraging areas back to the nests, but he says they might be able to travel 8 kilometers or more, so that queen dispersal range is key to their research and trapping efforts.
Genetic tests show the Asian Giant Hornets found in Nanaimo, British Columbia, were linked to Japan. Spichiger also says subsequent genetic testing indicates that there are no new establishments of the Asian Giant Hornets but, instead, what they’ve found are from the initial establishment.
They’ll also use drones equipped with GPS tracking from a company in Australia to more easily follow trapped and tagged hornets to their nests. Spichiger says the hornets, once captured and fitted with GPS tags, can then fly 30 to 40 miles per hour over blackberry and trees that are 8 feet high or more. Spichiger says it’s “unnerving” to cut through tall blackberry, knowing they could stumble across a nest at any moment, so he says use of the drones will make it easier and safer for them to track the hornets.
You can learn more about the hunt for Asian Giant Hornet from this TVW documentary:
