Officials in Washington state say they have eradicated the invasive insect that made headlines in recent years with the nickname “murder hornet.”
The insect, officially known as the Northern Giant Hornet, became established in the Blaine area of Whatcom County, just minutes south of the British Columbia border.
The hornets aren’t particularly dangerous to humans but have a voracious appetite for bees and other native pollinators and insects.
On Wednesday, officials with the Washington State Department of Agriculture said the state has gone three years without a confirmed detection and declared the insect eradicated.
“I’m incredibly proud of our team, which has dedicated years of hard work to safeguarding our state and the nation from this invasive threat to our native pollinators and agriculture,” WSDA director Derek Sandison said in a media release.
In a statement of its own, the B.C. Ministry of Agriculture and Food said British Columbia remains “Northern Giant Hornet-free.”
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“A hornet was last found in B.C. in the Fraser Valley in 2021 – it was the only hornet found that year,” it said.
“The Ministry’s annual surveillance and monitoring in the Fraser Valley concluded in 2024 and will resume if new findings are confirmed in the future.”
The Northern Giant Hornet was first discovered in North America near Nanaimo in 2019, and in 2020 WSDA specialists found and destroyed their first U.S. nest, followed by three more the following year.
All of the U.S. nests were in the area east of Blaine.
The WSDA deployed sophisticated technology in its bid to eradicate the species, capturing live hornets and fitting them with radio trackers that were used to follow them back to their nests.
Specialized teams clad in suits that wouldn’t be out of place in a science fiction movie then vacuumed the hornets from their nests and destroyed them.
The WSDA said Wednesday it had received one sighting of a “suspicious hornet” in Kitsap County in October 2024, but was never able to obtain the actual insect and thus unable to confirm its species.
Trapping and outreach in the area failed to turn up any other evidence, but the agency said it would continue to monitor for giant hornets through 2025.
The invasive insects — formerly known as the Asian giant hornet — are usually found in China, Japan, Thailand, South Korea, Vietnam and other countries in Asia, and have not been confirmed anywhere else in North America.
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