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Of: TT
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Photo: Karla Salp / WSDA / handout / AP / TT
Using dental floss, a radio transmitter is tied around the killer goat’s waist.
Killer wasps have terrorized America since they were found in May. Now, for the first time, a nest has been discovered, as the captured specimens were equipped with radio transmitters.
The first specimens on American soil were discovered in Washington state in December 2019, The New York Times reports.
Since then, the Asian giant horns have become a media series in the United States.
With a wingspan of up to three inches and a body two inches long, the Asian giant hornet is the largest wasp species in the world.
In folklore, insects have come to be called killer wasps. And they justify the nickname.
Pieces of heads
The fact that the giant horns, which originate from East Asia, kill up to 50 people in Japan each year has caused some concern. But when wasps are called killers, they refer to their main victim: bees.
The giant horns literally bite off the heads of bees, reports the AFP news agency. A small group of wasps can destroy a colony in just a few hours.
They then occupy the nest of bees where they live well on honey and larvae, until resources are depleted and the killer wasps advance to devastate the next colony.
For several months, the local agricultural authority in Washington has tried in vain to track down the giant horns.
“If successful in establishing itself, this wasp will have a negative impact on the environment, the economy and public health in Washington,” the agency wrote on its special information site on the invasive species.
The hunt paid off
Now the hunt for wasps has finally paid off.
Using a new type of trap, entomologists were able to catch three live killer wasps earlier this week.
Minimal radio transmitters were tied around the waist of the captured insects. Through them, the agency’s employees were able to follow the path of the killer wasps home, to the nest, hidden in a cavity in a tree, the first thing to be found on American soil.
– Ladies and gentlemen, we did it, declared the agricultural authority spokesperson, Karla Salp, triumphantly, reports Deutsche Welle.
Now the Washington authorities must do to killer wasps what killer wasps do to bees.
– We will kill them, says entomologist Sven-Erik Spichiger.
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