The "Using Dental Floss To Save The World" Story

 It was an ordinary day.  Reading an online story about honey bees when up popped a story titled "1st 'murder hornet's nest found in US."  Scientists have discovered the first nest of what have been called murder hornets in the state of Washington.  

The Asian Murder Hornet

These hornets are 2 inches long and can decimate entire hives of honeybees and deliver painful stings to people.  Farmers in the northwestern part of the United States rely on honeybees to pollinate various crops including raspberries and blueberries.  The nest was found when a worker for the Washington Agriculture Department caught two of the large hornets in a trap.   Two  more living hornets were captured a day later in another trap.  Entomologists, using dental floss, were able to attach radio trackers to the hornets and this led them to the hornet's nest.  The nest was inside the cavity of a hollow tree on private property.  The property owner gave the Agriculture Department permission to eradicate the nest and remove the tree.  Team members donning protective suits stuffed dense foam padding into a crevice above and below the nest entrance and wrapped the tree with cellophane leaving just a single opening.  They inserted a vacuum hose to remove the hornets.  

Getting ready to vacuum the hornets

85 Asian giant hornets were vacuumed into a special container from the nest and another 13 were captured in a net.  Entomologists will now try to determine if  the nest had begun to produce new queens.  More traps will be set through November in hopes of catching any more of the Asian giant hornets.   The first confirmed detection of the hornet in the U.S. was back in December of 2019.  Since that time about two dozen of the hornets had been trapped, but the discovery of the latest nest was a big help in the fight to eradicate the hornet.  The insect is usually found in China, Japan, Thailand, South Korea, Vietnam and other Asian countries.  They recently arrived in North America, being found in Canadian British Columbia  and then the state of Washington.  The trapping and eradication of the nest in Washington State was a big deal, but they are still looking for more.  They are trying to protect devastating attacks on honeybees, which are already under siege from problems like mites, diseases, pesticides and loss of food.  Here's hoping we can stop the spred of the Asian giant hornets before they get a foothold in the United States.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.