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 ...
Lots of ground hornet nests in the Pacific Northwest. You are usually okay if you just stay away 5 feet or so. Have stepped on them, stung, but let them settle down for 10 minutes and you can go back to working near them. Although I’ve run into a few where they are just nasty and you can’t get close again.
I recall the bald-faced hornets in Minnesota - feared.
I was at one site and got too close to a nest and chased by big black and white bumblebees which was really odd, they are usually so passive. Called the facility people (government site) and he poo-pooed the idea that I got attacked but he would come out. I had flagged the area.
I’m doing my work 200 feet away by now and he drives up, walks over to the flagging. All of a sudden he’s running back to his truck, waving his hat, etc. It was pretty funny, and me thinking “I told you so!”
He’d never seen such a thing either.
LOL. Could it be aliens?
"he drives up, walks over to the flagging. All of a sudden he’s running back to his truck, waving his hat"
I blamed it on the nuclear research they did at the site!
Harmless but I never liked them. Get powdered Sevin and sprinkle in their holes towards evening. After a week or so, they’ll be dead as they carry it to the nest.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.