Posted on 07/29/2021 3:44:52 AM PDT by Libloather
You may have heard of “murder hornets,” or Asian giant hornets, which made international headlines after a small number were spotted in the Pacific Northwest in 2019 and 2020. They are currently confined to the far northwestern corner of Washington State, in part due to a targeted campaign to find them and eradicate their nests.
Even so, the discovery of these aggressive, two-inch-long insects known for decimating entire honeybee colonies led to concern throughout the United States, with many people misidentifying local wasps as murder hornets. What many people are actually seeing, according to entomologist Justin Schmidt at the University of Arizona, is a harmless native wasp with an equally fierce name: the cicada killer.
The name is fitting. Females are large, measuring up to an inch and a half in length, and they prey exclusively upon cicadas, which they find, grapple with, and inject with venom. This paralyzes the cicada, which the wasps then carry back in flight to their subterranean lairs. Since mid-July, cicada killers have been emerging from their underground burrows and buzzing around people’s yards.
Cicada killers go after the more dependable seasonal cicadas, not the periodical species, such as Brood X, which descended upon the eastern U.S. in May. Though there are four species of cicada killer in North America, all of them are similar in appearance and behavior.
Despite their large size and bright yellow and brown coloring, cicada killers are harmless to humans - they’re “gentle giants of the wasp world,” Schmidt says.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Hate crime?
I’m not sure what’s outside my door, but they are huge and live in the dirt. They’re always flying low searching for something...
Cicada Killers. They will not bother you. Where I used to live, I’d mow the lawn and go right over their holes. They didn’t care at all....
Thank you.
They always fly towards me when I walk by, but then divert away.
I’ve been relieved not to have read much of anything this year about Murder Hornets. To quote a CRT school district hystric: “Let Them Die!”.
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-first-giant-murder-hornet-of-the-year-has-been-discovered-in-the-us
I’m in the Seattle area so you made me look! They found an old dead one about 100(?) miles south of the area near Canada that was a hotspot last year. Different markings and DNA which they say means it is a different infestation. (Oh joy!).
It was found near Marysville, about 50(?) miles north of Seattle.
I work out in the woods quite a bit and have stirred up my fair share of ground hornet nests. I think these “murder hornets” have nests up in trees so that is good news for me.
Years ago I was working for a couple of weeks in a field with low bushes with flowers - COVERED with honey bees I presume. Spent every day walking/crashing through those bushes. The bees were too worried about getting the nectar to be bothered with me. It was pretty amazing.
Ever step on a Yellow Jacket nest? I was lucky. They only got me 6 times. They ain't bees, for sure.
I got stung on the top of my hand by one many years ago. I was on the shooting range and had my hands behind my back waiting. One landed in that spot above my hands. I didn’t even know it was there. It freaked me out when I saw it and how big it was. The top of my hand swelled up pretty badly. I made an aspirin poultice and kept using it to suck out any of the poison. It seemed to work.
There’s some at the park where I play senior softball. They’re fun to watch especially if they’ve captured a cicada and are flying it to their underground nest......Totally harmless
This article reminds me of a wasp they have in the south the locals call a cow killer or something like that. They are rare to see, I might see only one a year, the look like a fuzzy red ant, and if I’m right they don’t have any wings but are still part of the wasp family and basically you will see only one of them by themselves, I think they live solitary by themselves. they craw around the ground, and climb flowers in the fields and sting and kill wasps or something like that. You don’t want to step on them, they are very painful and will make you feel like you would rather die, then face the pain. Anyway the farmers call them cow killers because if they sting a cow they will make a cow roll over on their side and moan and groan out of pain like they were dying of something.
These are gentle giants. Must be a love bite.
Either one of them, I want to get the hell away.
Just rename them “orca’s”. Then people will pay money to go on tours to watch them.
Honey bees are interesting. I used to put a drop of cola on the tip of my finger and hold it up. Within 1 or 2 minutes, one would land on my finger and start licking (??) it up. They never stung me.
AS for yellow jackets, been stung once (got too close to their nest). BUT, the yellow jackets in Japan (looked identical), would avoid me no matter how close I got to them or their nest.
Also, the ants in Japan seemed to have no stinger.
One that hasn’t been mentioned is the Bald Faced Hornet which is a variety of yellow jacket.
That’s the hornet that builds a large, teardrop shaped nest out of what looks like brown paper, usually hung from a tree limb.
Don’t ever disturb one, they are nasty critters. The whole hive will attack.
Also the ones depicted in Looney Tunes cartoons and Tom & Jerry.
You can make a copy of that nest out of brown paper bags, and according to a friend, the annoying Red Wasp (that stings me almost every year) will not build anywhere near it. I still need to try that...he says he puts two at diagonally opposing corners of his house and wasps won’t build anywhere near. They fly around now and then, but never build a nest near that hornet nest copy.
ROFL.
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