The murder hornet’s cousin has been found in South Carolina
Remember the “murder hornet” scare of 2020? To provide a synopsis, the potentially lethal invasive species is the largest hornet currently in existence, is believed to have been carried over to the west coast via cargo vessels in late 2019, and was first sighted in Vancouver and the northern Washington state area in 2020. Due to diligent trapping practices by the state’s agricultural department and the help of wary citizens, Vespa mandarinia AKA the “murder hornet” has not had a sighting in North America for the past two years and is on its way to being declared eradicated from the continent. It has a cousin, referred to as the yellow-legged hornet, that was found in both Georgia and South Carolina in late 2023. While not as large or as dangerous to humans, it can have a devastating impact on both native and managed bees. The yellow-legged hornet, Vespa velutina, is a predatory insect that has been reported to attack western honeybee colonies, becoming a concerning pest of beekeeping operations where it has been introduced, and has the potential to become a significant threat to the already struggling pollinator populations. South Carolina has a robust beekeeping industry that Clemson University officials have been tasked with protecting. Teams are proactively enhancing the trapping efforts around the region where the hornets were found, will be working with federal officials to confirm suspected specimens, and are encouraging the public to report any suspected sightings or specimens to their website.
Invasive species can present a threat to agricultural production in more ways than one. It is true that bees kept for honey would be directly impacted if an invasive population of hornets were to be introduced as an additional predator. However, an additional higher tier predator can cause detrimental changes to the trophic balance of an ecosystem, negatively affecting its function and the services it provides to agricultural production. Pest management, the spread of disease, and pollinator efficacy could all suffer under those conditions. Will the public care as much about stopping the spread of an invasive hornet that is indifferentiable from native ones to the untrained eye and does not pose as much of a threat to human safety? The public craze surrounding the murder hornet could have had some contribution to the fact that an individual from that species has not been spotted in Washington for years now. Supporting the natural systems already in place to manage populations of introduced species can help prevent imbalances — in a system where communities of predatory wasps and lower trophic levels are already thriving, there exists less of a niche for similar introduced species. This begs the question — what nature are we preserving? Geologic time has shifted towards the Anthropocene: humans are now a more powerful force than nature and have influence over every ecosystem on the planet. While the field of agroecology implies there is a natural synergistic relationship between farming and ecology, there also exists an assumption that “nature” should serve the needs of production for humans. If mankind changes how the natural world functions, land managers and stewards, ecologists and farmers should have a growing portion of that influence.
Article source: Veit, J. (2023, November 21). Yellow-legged hornet detected in Jasper County; Clemson officials ask public to report large hornets. Clemson News. https://news.clemson.edu/yellow-legged-hornet-detected-in-jasper-county-clemson-officials-ask-public-to-report-large-hornets/
