These look like photos from the set of a sci-fi film but they actually show Washington State Dept of Agriculture workers in protective suits vacuuming hundreds of 2-inch-long invasive Asian giant hornets from the first nest found in the U.S. https://apnews.com/article/insects-washington-asia-agriculture-united-states-c235c7f6725460b463af968bb1355445

Entomologists found the basketball-sized nest, which was in a tree cavity in Blaine, WA, after several attempts to attach radio trackers to captured wasps with glue and dental floss. Sometimes the tracker fell off or the wasp chewed through the floss. Finally one worked.

The workers wore rubber gloves/boots & thick foam suits.

Asian giant hornets have ~6 mm long stingers, about 4x the length of a honeybee stinger. The pain has been described as “a migraine contained in the tip of your finger" & a "hot nail driven into you."

And they spit venom.

Because they are so large, armored, and aggressive, a few dozen Asian giant hornets can rapidly devastate a honey bee colony that has tens of thousands of bees, decapitating the adults and feasting on the larvae

Japanese honey bees have developed a defense against Asian giant hornets: if a hornet invades, the bees envelop it, beating their wings furiously until they cook and suffocate the hornet to death.

Unfortunately honey bees and native bees in N. America do not have this defense.

*Clarification: although people sometimes describe the hornets as "spitting" venom, it would be more accurate to say they spray or shoot venom, as it comes from their back ends, not their mouths.

Apparently it looks like this:

The basketball-sized nest in WA had 100 - 200 wasps, but it's probably not the only out out there. Nests can be 3 feet across & contain 800+ wasps.

The swiftness w/ which this nest was found and eradicated is encouraging, though. Hopefully these strategies will continue to work.

Sources & More

https://apnews.com/article/insects-washington-asia-agriculture-united-states-c235c7f6725460b463af968bb1355445

AP photos by @ElaineMThompson

https://apnews.com/article/washington-first-murder-hornet-discovery-0cbf9cccf5a4a62902aa880c87629172

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-23/washington-state-discovers-first-murder-hornet-nest-in-us

https://www.peninsuladailynews.com/news/murder-hornet-gets-away-from-entomologist/

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2020/oct/23/asian-giant-hornets-nest-found-in-whatcom-county/

https://www.king5.com/article/tech/science/environment/entomologists-safely-remove-first-asian-giant-hornet-nest-found-in-us-in-whatcom-county/281-681e736b-5af2-4101-8a7b-0d2feb6db982

Japanese honey bees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Honeybee_thermal_defence01.jpg