so today we've got something interesting to talk about
a lot of people are panicking when they see these
giant hornets in the united states they see something like this and
immediately they think it's the murder hornet
that's what the media has labeled them but the murder hornet applies to the
asian giant hornet where have those things
been found only a few specimens in washington state
people are keeping an eye on them they're going to track them we're going
to deal with them if they're here but the asian giant hornet is not found
all over the united states and i think most likely people are
finding this hornet right here it's the european hornet that's all it
is vespa crabro these things are found all over the
united states they're not new they didn't just show up here they've been
here since the 1800s and they were brought in now their
numbers are on the rise these are yellow jackets yellow jackets
in my opinion far more of a pest than the european
hornets are even though they're much smaller these
things move around in big gangs this time of year
it is september the 21st by the way and this time of year the numbers are
high food resources are scarce so what's that mean
they're gonna be pests to people they're also going to be
pinging on your honeybee hives and trying to get in those entrances
these nice big european hornets may nab a honeybee or two
but don't panic they're not gonna kill and eat
every bee out of a hive the way the asian giant hornets would
so i get asked a lot of questions about these some people commented and sent me
messages saying go check out this video they just found the asian giant murder
hornet well thanks to the media by calling it a murder hornet
everybody's panicked not everybody obviously those who understand the
differences will be calm the purpose of this video
will be to help you understand what they are and what the threat really is
and the european hornet as big as it is and
uh as striking as they are to look at are really considered gentle giants i
would much rather have these around than bald face hornets which i'm going to
show you later in this video or the yellow jackets which make up for
you know their lack of size with pure numbers
you can be outside sipping your cup of coffee and i've actually
sipped in a yellow jacket and spit it right back out because they're so bold
they're so hungry they zip in they land on your food they get on your hot dogs
they want food just like every other insect and this time of year
their numbers are high as i mentioned before and the resources are low so
they're going to rob each other there's going to be conflicts how did
they end up here at these drinkers well i put out
spirulina which is an algae that comes a dry powder form
and i put it in sugar syrup and i was trying to find out if honeybees would
come to it because it's supposed to be extremely
healthy for their bee gut the microbiome and instead what happened
one or two honeybees stopped by but all of the other visitors were hornets
and wasps so i have this nice big european hornet
here to look at there are several zipping around you can
hear them in the audio and they have a very low pitch because
they fly with their wings beating at a much lower
frequency than other wasps and hornets do
how many hornets are in the united states right now established
just one they're in the wasp family vespas but these are hornets
and there's only one species of hornet established in the united states
now other people want me to update my other videos and say that the european
hornet is not the largest horn in the united states anymore because the asian
giant hornets the murder hornets are here
well they're not established they haven't found any of their nests yet but
they have found specimens as i mentioned before if you
think you have found a true asian giant hornet you contact
your department of agriculture they're going to want to know there are
also inflated claims about how large the ones are that people find
they say they're as large as their finger three inches long
if you have something like that that's a record even for the asian giant hornet
european hornets they max out at about 35 millimeters
they're not that big really they're just so much bigger than the other flying
insects that we see there are some interesting facts about
them though they can fly and hunt in daytime or
night time they're also attracted to light so if
you leave a outside security light on or something like that
this time of year you might actually see them hovering around those lights
because they're going to nab the moths and other insects that also
are attracted to those lights the yellow jackets
they fly during the daytime you find them in the ground that's the other
thing where would you find their nest so the nest of the european hornets is
going to be shielded it's going to be covered somewhere
they do have a bad habit of moving in houses and cavities
they build a paper nest just like paper wasps do
but it's usually sheltered inside another space
so they could be in an old abandoned building they could be in the hollow of
a tree and uh if you get to their nest site
that's the place where you don't want to mess with them
because it will be defensive other people spread around sensational
information like if you get stung by one of these things you are dead that's
it not really the case in fact the pain from a sting of one of these european
hornets is right on par with a honeybee they have a nice big
stinger but uh i'm filming this
less than 10 inches away they don't care that i'm here
they're cool to look at and uh also why are they letting me get
so close even this yellow jacket that's drinking here
spirulina with sugar syrup that's all they do and how much
spirulina did i put in that four teaspoons per quart
and what's interesting too is photographically it worked out because
it made the sugar syrup so dark that it made the surface nice and
reflective so i took advantage of that got out
there with my camera a lot of people ask what kind of
equipment i use to make these videos well you'd be disappointed in this one
because i cobbled together the lens system for
this so you can't just go out and buy one
here the yellow jacket is sitting right on that water and it's pretty
interesting the surface tension this is syrupy
you think they get stuck but watch this one just helicopter across the surface
there until it gets to the edge
and then off she goes and that's likely a yellow jacket queen by the way
the close-ups of these european hornets are very interesting because it gives us
a chance to look at their eyes they have five eyes soda bees
two large compound eyes you can see and look at the three
simple eyes they sell out that are in the middle
also you can tell the difference between male and female
by the number of segments in their antenna there are lots of people
watching my youtube so will be happy to tell you the specifics of that
but these are armor-plated giants and the other thing i want you to look at is
look at their legs first of all they have the clear pads at the tips of their
feet which allow them to climb on smooth
surfaces but the spikes that you see about what
we would call the knee you see the spike sticking out looks
like a single spike from the profile but they're actually in a v
shape there are two spikes on each leg and they face each other so that when
they grab something they get a really good grip by stabbing
those spikes into it do these things eat meat no they don't
what they do is they grab things including honeybees
their mandibles are so powerful they make very short work of a honeybee or
even another wasp they clip off the head in the abdomen
they keep the thorax which is where the wings are attached there
why do you think they like that because that's where all the muscle is that's
where all the meat protein is they're gonna take that back to their
developing larvae and that's what eats the meat see that
narrow connection between the abdomen and the thorax
they can't swallow digest and eat meat so they get
syrup and nectar and when they feed they're developing larvae the larvae
produce a nectar that they drink so that's a reward
here's my loan honeybee has come to this spirulina loaded sugar syrup
one thing i want you to notice about the tongue in this honeybee look how she's
thrusting her tongue in and out when the syrup is really thick and heavy
they use their tongue to sponge it up if it's really
thin syrup then they don't thrust their tongue in and out instead they just suck
it up they form a tube with the parts of their
mandible with their proboscis i'm sorry the
mandibles are the dark brown pieces that are on the sides they're
holding the proboscis together to give it the shape it needs to draw that
liquid up into the mouth and into the crop of this pea
so the honeybees were my target instead i created a fantastic
reservoir a feeding station for all species of wasps and of course
these hornets which gave me an opportunity to photograph and video them
and now share it with you so you get these close-up looks
so if someone has killed one of these hopefully they did they're not just
talking about it and they say they have a murder hornet
you'll be able to send them this video and say
did it happen to look like this because 99.9 percent of the time
they're mistaking the european hornet vespa crabro
for the asian giant hornet which is vespa
mandarina
it's cool to be able to watch him up close i'm not wearing a bee suit here
i'm just sitting here looking at them they don't care
because they're not here for meat they're not going to attack me they
don't bring down large prey like people and they can eat
your bees as i mentioned before but it's not worth going out and killing every
hornet that you find because they are not the big harassers
of your beehives the yellow jackets are so if you want to catch yellow jackets
green light go ahead when they come after your bees
sometimes you're justified in putting out traps because it'll give relief to
those fall colonies of bees which by the way
attack each other so even bees are hard on bees this time
of year but the thing that's interesting is when
i put out these samples of spirulina s-p-i-r-u-l-i-n-a
with the sugar syrup all the wasps and hornets were drawn to that and away
from my honeybee apiary which is 75 feet to the east of this location
so i got a great opportunity to photograph and video these specimens
and at the same time did my apiary a favor by drawing them off
and now they don't have to defend against them can our honeybees
defend themselves against these european hornets
they really can't these hornets make such short work of a honeybee they fly
in they land on the landing board they have a bee they fly away they hang
upside down which is interesting on a twig
and they dispatch the bee and then they fly away home
so they don't do what other bee species in asia can do where they
ball the hornet and they kill the scout and they overheat it our bees just don't
do that the honeybees that i keep are the bee
weaver bees and of course the saskatras bees over the last year and a half
and they guard their entrances just fine yellow jackets are not having a good
time around here this year so they're not successful in getting
after my bees now here you can see those spikes on the legs really clearly
imagine the poor bug that gets nabbed by this hornet and spiked with those
spikes just to hold them so they can fly away until they dispatch
them with those mandibles some people have said that the spikes
kill the specimen that they nab that really
doesn't work out that way it's just a mechanism for hanging on and not
releasing it look at the hind legs there and all the
spikes on those so they build their paper nests inside a
cavity if you find them in the nest let somebody know
even the european hornets are pretty defensive you just close that off guess
what they're going to do they're going to make another hole if
it's on the wall of your house they'll end up inside
so they hunt at night they hunt during the day
there's a lot of them around i consider them gentle giants
and i much prefer them over the yellow jackets
here we are back to the yellow jackets just look at them all
there's a lot of different sub species too so it's not just all all yellow
jackets are not the same but as i mentioned before they're bold
you can be drinking your coffee as i was they
covered up and land on it now here's my least
favorite of the wasps the bald face hornet
now it's called a bald-faced hornet but it's really just a wasp it's not a true
hornet
are you ready for this dolo kaspuna maculata and here they are all in a row
yellow jacket first face hornet which is just a wasp second
and then the true hornet here in north america the european hornet
largest of them all and other people write and say you said that was the
largest of them all well we have bigger where we live there are bigger
wasps that's true they're tarantula wasps
there's a cicada killer those are not hornets those are wasps
so it's really just getting into classification
we only have one true resident hornet now
and that is the european hornet we're showing here in the background
bald face one at the foreground bald face hornets make a huge paper nest
in a bush in a tree and you can wind up walking into that mess and getting stung
as well these are honeybees on their landing board
nothing's getting in here if you come across honey bees
please don't kill them these are our pollinators these are our honey makers
these are social they get themselves through winter
socially they depend on one another to generate
heat to defend the hive so a much nicer bee can make it
just out of the pure numbers that they offer in defense of their colony
and that's the other thing people have scared the public by saying we have a
murder hornet and the response can be that they get insecticides and they
spray every flying insect they come across
purely out of fear i highly recommend not using poisons if you feel like you
have to trap something use a trap don't use poisons we just don't know
where that's going to go in my opinion so i'd much prefer that you trap and
collect them that way and make sure that your trap is baited in such a way that
honeybees don't go in there so you want to put apple cider vinegar
in there you might want to put yeast in there
there are lots of recipes for traps if you have a hornet problem
or a wasp problem yellow jackets get them if you have a problem bald face
hornets green light on taking those out if they come after you because they are
bad news now here in the foreground is the male honeybee probably the most
harmless bee you'll ever come across great big eyes super fuzzy body
here we picked them up there's 30 of them or more
on the ground in front of this hive why because we're going into winter the male
bees aren't needed they just chuck them out there they
can't bite you they can't sting you they have a little tiny tongue they get
fed by nurse bees and the nurse bees have stopped
feeding the drones so the male bees have seen their day
do you think this one was lucky enough to mate with a virgin queen no because
he's still alive if he made it with a virgin queen
he would have disconnected from his reproductive organ and he'd be dead
somewhere in a field so instead he's just left here on
september the 21st cast out of the hive no longer being fed
he'll run out of energy and just die overnight
ants will come and collect them maybe a skunk or two will come through
and eat them so when you see bees don't hurt them when you see the
european hornet please don't assume that it's the asian
giant murder hornet they just aren't your chances of seeing
an asian giant hornet this year are slim to none
if you do though if it doesn't look like this one call your department of
agriculture and report it catch a specimen thanks for watching
i hope you found this interesting and i hope you found the information for
identifying hornets and wasps valuable have a great
week
you