2020 just keeps on finding ways to make our lives challenging. This time it’s murder hornets. They have a quarter inch long stinger and can wipe out a domestic bee hive in an hour. The adults body’s are 1 3/4 inches long. Scientists were able to attach electronic trackers to captured hornets to find the best.
This nest was found on private property in Blaine, just North of Seattle Washington. Scientists thought murder hornets nested in the ground. But this nest was found in a hollow tree.
There’s some photos of the best extraction.
Daily Mail has a lot more photos and information. Probably taken from several published articles.
According to the Whatcom County Government Facebook page: ‘The nest, which was located in a tree trunk, was sealed, vacuumed and then injected with carbon dioxide to asphyxiate whatever remained in the cavity. The nest will later be removed and dissected for further study by entomologists.’
So it sounds like they’re not being extracted alive. They did capture ones alive, and put tracking devices on them to lead authorities to the nest.
Were they collecting them alive for research or something? They were vacuumed up into a transparent cannister. One of the photos appears to show the cannister packed in ice cubes.
Wanna know something really stupid? We have a different species of invasive hornet currently spreading through Europe, which is occasionally showing up in the UK.
There’s a big campaign to stop it getting established, which means tracking down every single nest. By far the best way to do this is to put some kind of tracking thing on worker hornets, which will be taking food back… but it’s illegal to release them as they’re classed as invasive. This means you can’t catch, tag and release them, even though the ones you’d be tagging are sterile workers, and you’re literally doing it to find the nest. The gummint agency responsible for enforcing this rule is also the one running the campaign to prevent them getting established, who are actually showing up if any workers are found, so they’re making everyone try and mark them without catching the stupid things, making it much harder and less effective, all because of the rule intended to prevent the spread of invasive species…
If I read it correctly, most of the hornets were vacuumed out while alive, then they filled the nest with CO2 to kill off any that the vacuum didn’t get. All I can think is that they thought too many would get away if they did it the other way around, but I’m still curious.
The video on this page shows what I am taking to be a vacuum canister, and the hornets look dead to me.
From the site linked above:
A researcher from the University of Washington, using tiny technology, has been playing a big role in helping state entomologists tackle a giant problem…
Vikram Iyer, a PhD student at the University of Washington, works in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering’s Networks and Mobile Systems Lab under the direction of Associate Professor Shyam Gollakota. His research focuses on wireless technologies including the development of bio-inspired and bio-integrative wireless sensors…
“[Thursday] I wasn’t able to make it up there but the group tried slightly larger radios with longer battery life,” Iyer said. “They followed a hornet back close to the same property where we lost it last week and noticed some insects flying into a hole in a tree which turned out to be the nest.
So it looks like a PhD student developed the technology, but was unable to do the work personally on Thursday. I would assume that since this is a new technology developed at U-Dub, the work was carried out by people there.
It is sort of a joke. My understanding is that the sting feels like having a two-penny nail pounded into you, but it is not, per se, lethal. A dozen or two people in Asia succumb from the sting of the giant hornet, but I think most who are stung do not. The outcome probably turns on general state of health and sensitivity to bee/wasp venom.
Murder Hornet Nest found and destroyed North of Seattle Washington
Actually, it’s pretty far north of Seattle. Blaine, where the nest was found, is right on the Canadian border. Our house is four miles directly south of the border. My office is in Seattle, and it’s a 115-mile drive.