DAVIS, Calif. — A California professor said people should calm down about the recent buzz surrounding “murder hornets."
>> Watch out: ‘Murder hornets’ could threaten US honeybee population
Lynn Kimsey, a professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis, is telling Americans to relax.
“At this point, I would tell people to just take a deep breath and maybe have a glass of wine and just relax because it’s a nonissue at this point,” Kimsey told KTXL.
“Now, if we found another nest or two, then you start doing some interventions. But that part of Washington, it’s pretty far removed from California agricultural regions and it would take them a while to get down here. So it’s plenty of time.”
Kimsey said she believes she has been stung by the giant Asian hornet, Vespa mandarina, the television station reported. “I don’t know if it was that species or a closely related one,” Davis, a hornet expert, told the television station. “It’s a little bit like sticking your finger in an electrical outlet.”
The insect has a distinctively fierce face with eyes that resemble the Spider-Man cartoon character, according to The New York Times. The hornet also has tiger-like orange and black stripes that extend the length of its body, and broad wings one might find on a dragonfly, the newspaper reported.
The insects get their nickname from their habit of attacking beehives, killing the adult bees and eating the larvae and pupae.
According to the Washington State Department of Agriculture, the hornets reached the United States for the first time in December in the city of Blaine. The department verified four reports of the insects, according to CBS News.
Kimsey said the hornets probably were transported to the United States in a shopping container, KTXL reported.
“They found one nest in September and then they found one individual, I think it was dead when they found it, in December,” Kimsey told the television station. “And that’s it. That’s the only observations that have been made of it here in the Americas.”
The colony found in that nest was immediately killed when discovered, Kimsey said. Kimsey said she thought several bee stings were worse than those of the murder hornets.
“If I had to pick, honeybee sting venom is far worse as far as I’m concerned because it lasts,” Kimsey told KTXL.
Cox Media Group
