Live Murder Hornet Spotted in Washington State | Hacker News Reader

Live Murder Hornet Spotted in Washington State

seattletimes.com

23 pointscf100clunk7 comments

I recently had a bit of a panic attack when I saw what I thought was a murder hornet in Kentucky. (Last time I had read news of them was early 2020, that they were in the PNW: so I wondered what if somehow the problem was worse than we thought?)

I sprayed the thing and got a closer look, and I felt bad afterwards because what I had killed was most likely a Cicada Killer (It was cicada season, after all). It had beautiful striking orange and blue coloration and it was big as all get out.

I think I had a run-in with one of those in Maryland. I hadn't been following the murder hornet story much since they seemed to be isolated to the PNW, but thought I saw one in my backyard earlier this year. I haven't seen one since, but it's good to know it was probably just a cicada killer.

I've been killing 20-30 a day in front of our bee hives for a few weeks now. They don't even attack me when I'm doing that, the bees are the only risk.

These kinds of alarmist articles are always a bit amusing. We've been dealing with this mess for years now in the north of the country but when a single nest was spotted in a city park in the capital it made national news. These suck for the native species that are not adapted to them but they're almost no risk to people. You'd have to go mess with their nest to have a problem. I wish I could even do that. They're so well hidden I'm stuck trying to fend off a relentless attack one by one.

Had a nest outside my door. My kids all got stung.

Dumped 2 full cans of bee spray (different brands) into the nest.

Couple days later it was as busy as ever. Rest of summer kids were instructed to take long way around house.

Bees won

Just call and have a beekeeper remove it. It's free, and you don't have to dump cans on insecticide into your living environment (and the local insects living environment).

Which country are you in? These hornets have only recently appeared in the US and well, when you say "suck for the native species"... We're trying to avoid that here.

I'm in Portugal where they're also recent. Everyone is trying to avoid the losses to other species although as usual people mostly care about honey bees. That doesn't make these "murder hornets".

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