NOT A DRILL: Giant Murder Hornets Have Reached North America, And They’re Deadly

I’d like to interrupt your daily feed of Coronavirus news to bring to your attention to something from Asia that actually might kill you.

That is an Asian giant hornet, native to Japan, and they have infiltrated America, according to the New York Times. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

With queens that can grow to two inches long, Asian giant hornets can use mandibles shaped like spiked shark fins to wipe out a honeybee hive in a matter of hours, decapitating the bees and flying away with the thoraxes to feed their young. For larger targets, the hornet’s potent venom and stinger — long enough to puncture a beekeeping suit — make for an excruciating combination that victims have likened to hot metal driving into their skin.

Their presence on our shores was first brought to the attention of beekeeper Ted McFall in Blaine, Washington, when he found that an entire hive of his had been decapitated and ripped apart. He can’t prove that the grisly mass murder was perpetrated by murder hornets, but it’s kind of in the same way that we can’t prove the Clintons had Jeffrey Epstein murdered. Murder hornets have been found in the area and it fits their MO.

Scientists in the American northwest and across the border in Canada are now scrambling to try to find these little (okay, giant) f*ckers before they decimate the local bee population and also take over the world by killing us all in our sleep.

In November, a single hornet was seen in White Rock, British Columbia, perhaps 10 miles away from the discoveries in Washington State — likely too far for the hornets to be part of the same colony. Even earlier, there had been a hive discovered on Vancouver Island, across a strait that probably was too wide for a hornet to have crossed from the mainland.

Crews were able to track down the hive on Vancouver Island. Conrad Bérubé, a beekeeper and entomologist in the town of Nanaimo, was assigned to exterminate it.

He set out at night, when the hornets would be in their nest. He put on shorts and thick sweatpants, then his bee suit. He donned Kevlar braces on his ankles and wrists.

But as he approached the hive, he said, the rustling of the brush and the shine of his flashlight awakened the colony. Before he had a chance to douse the nest with carbon dioxide, he felt the first searing stabs in his leg — through the bee suit and underlying sweatpants.

“It was like having red-hot thumbtacks being driven into my flesh,” he said. He ended up getting stung at least seven times, some of the stings drawing blood.