Watch A ‘Murder Hornet’ Destroy An Entire Honeybee Hive

Asian giant hornets nicknamed murder hornet, murder hornet, murder hornet, murder hornets. Right when you thought 2020 couldn't get any worse, murder hornets made their big U.S. debut. But are murder hornets as murderous as their nickname suggests? That is definitely an overblown nickname. So it should be more accurately honeybee murder hornet. Yes, they murder, but they're almost certainly not going to murder you. Asian giant hornets are responsible for up to 50 deaths a year in Asia, especially in Japan, which has been dealing with the problem for thousands of years. But it takes multiple stings to kill a person. Hornets are, however, capable of killing insects and even rodents. And viral videos of these attacks from years ago are making their way around the internet again. Even if we were living in a place like Japan or Korea, we would very rarely be exposed to life-threatening stings. But the real victim and biggest concern is the already declining honeybee population. Murder hornets were first spotted in Washington state in December, and beekeepers there are very concerned. Establishment of the Asian giant hornet could decimate the Western honeybee population here on a regular basis. The honeybees are already under threat as it changes habitat and the use of certain pesticides. The Asian giant hornet is the biggest known hornet in the world. The hornet can grow up to two inches long, with a curved stinger long enough to puncture a bee suit. They do have a pretty potent sting. They can deliver a lot of venom, and that venom can have really unpleasant impacts on the human skin and nervous system. Beekeeper Conrad Berube found North America's first hornet nest in Canada in September, which most likely started after the hornets hitched a ride on a cargo ship from Asia. Being stung by the Asian giant hornet is like having red hot thumbtacks driven into the flesh. My legs kind of felt the muscular soreness and throbbing like when you have a bad flu. When I went up and down stairs for the next 24 hours, it was like, oh, it really was painful. Because of their massive size, they need a lot of food to survive, and honeybees are a great meal option. They seem to be specialized in honeybees. Honeybees are easy to identify and find, and they can pick up their hive and fly away. Here's how the honeybee assault plays out in three phases. Individual hornets will capture bees at a hive entrance, cut off their heads, and mash their bodies into a meatball so they can drag it back to feed their young. Then, one worker hornet will recruit her sisters and stage an attack on a target beehive. The hornets rip off the heads of the bees one by one until the whole colony is decimated in a matter of hours. A rarely witnessed assault captured here. Then, the hornets shift to feeding. They take over the beehive filled with decapitated dead bees for about a week, collecting the pupae and larvae to feed to their own children. Because Japanese honeybees co-evolved with hornets, they've found a way to fight back by forming a hot defensive bee ball, which has been seen in videos circulating in Japan. Once the hornet worker enters the hive, they'll rush in as a mass, kind of clamp onto it with their mandibles, and then just through their own metabolism will raise the temperature and actually flood it with carbon dioxide. Sadly, the Western species of honeybees found in North America do not have those powers. If the hive's under attack, they'll keep going out the entrance and getting knocked off in these aerial dogfights. This makes our honeybees even more vulnerable to the new threat. The last thing beekeepers need right now is another pest to worry about. We have a really robust trapping program this season. Any hornet hits that we find, we will increase our trapping and search options. We have infrared cameras and all sorts of things to bring into play. The goal is every time we find a hornet, we want to trace that to a nest and then destroy that nest. So it may be that we never find any hornets. The only confirmed sightings we have right now are in our tiny corner of the Pacific Northwest. So for now, we can only savor the videos that went viral of hornets losing battles to insect heroes.