Todd McLeish
Worried? Get yourself some more Praying Mantises. To watch this video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvPk7EXxdUE
News of the arrival in North America of a non-native insect with the terrifying colloquial name of murder hornet has alarmed residents around the country. But a University of Rhode Island entomologist said there is little reason for Rhode Islanders to worry about them.
Two
murder hornets – which are more appropriately called Asian giant hornets – were
discovered in Washington State in December shortly after a nest was discovered
in nearby British Columbia.
Native to Japan, where they are responsible for
about 50 human deaths per year, the 2-inch insects with orange heads and black
eyes are best known for their foraging behavior of ripping the heads off
honeybees and feeding the rest of the bees’ bodies to their young.
“Their
reputation as murder hornets comes from the fact that they can kill a lot of
honeybees in a very short period of time,” said URI entomologist Lisa
Tewksbury.
“The major concern about their arrival in North America is for the
damage they could cause to commercial honeybees used for pollinating agricultural
fields. They are capable of quickly destroying beehives.”
Tewksbury
said the hornet’s sting isn’t any more toxic than that of the bees and hornets
commonly found around New England, but because of their large size, murder
hornets can deliver a larger dose of toxin with each sting. They are a danger
to humans only when stung multiple times.
“But
they’re not known to aggressively attack humans,” she said. “It only happens
occasionally and randomly.”
Rhode
Island is home to two hornets similar in size to the murder hornet – the cicada
killer hornet, which dig their nests in sandy or light soil in areas like
athletic fields and playgrounds, and the European hornet, a non-native species
that has become naturalized in New England after its arrival here in the 1800s.
Like the murder hornet, they are among the largest wasp-like insects in the
world.
Tewksbury
said that it is extremely unlikely that the Asian giant hornets in the Pacific
Northwest are in Rhode Island or likely will be soon. The concern is that no
one knows how the hornets made it to Washington.
“We
don’t know the pathway it took to get to Washington, and since we don’t know,
it’s difficult to know how to prevent further introductions into North
America,” said Tewksbury.
Although
she said that Rhode Islanders need not be concerned about murder hornets, she
advises residents to keep their eyes out for any unusual insect they’ve never
seen before, since non-native insects do occasionally arrive in the region.
“Take
a picture of it and report it to the Rhode Island Department of Environmental
Management’s invasive species sighting form,” Tewksbury
said. “It could be something that we don’t know is here, and reporting it is
the only way anyone would know.”