'Murder Hornets' Are Bad, But Don't Quite Live Up To Their Name

Only one hive was known to exist, on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, and it was destroyed, according to a CBS News report.

However, two other specimens were later spotted in Blaine, Washington - one was dead but the other flew off. Experts say that there are most likely more of them about, but that an "invasion" across North America remains unlikely.

These things are no joke. Measuring up to two inches in length, these hornets are the world's largest and look like they were engineered specifically to be menacing.

To honey bees, murder hornets are an absolute nightmare. They're famous for decapitating bees by the dozens after invading a hive, and videos posted on the internet have shown that decapitation doesn't completely stop the hornets. Just 30 murder hornets can kill 30,000 honey bees, Oklahoma State entomologist Wyatt Hoback told KOKH.

To keep their hives safe, they use methods like structuring entryways that are too small for the hornets to enter, but still large enough for bees to come and go.

In some cases, the beekeepers will go to further lengths, too. "labor is often cheap, so some use mechanical means—most often tennis rackets, really—to swat the large hornets as they come to the hives," apiculturist and former bee researcher with the USDA Jeff Pettis told Scientific American.

That's right. They swat hornets with tennis rackets.

Japan has reports up to 50 deaths from murder hornet stings per year. In the U.S., an average of 62 people die from bee stings each year, according to the CDC, so it's not unlikely that allergies play a role in those deaths.

However, even if it doesn't kill you, a murder hornet's sting will still be a memorable experience.

And unlike bees, they can sting and deliver their toxin many times, and their extra-large stingers have been known to punch through through multiple layers of clothing and protective gear.

As Scientific American reported, people have likened a sting to being jabbed by a hot metal pin.

"It will put you in momentous amounts of pain for close to six hours," he said of the sting. "My arm kind of ballooned up to twice its normal size, so it was intense. Now, a single sting is not likely to kill a human unless you have an allergic reaction to the venom, but 30 or 40 stings could kill you."

"As long as you don't step in a nest or approach a beehive they have taken over, there is a fairly low risk that you will be stung," Washington State Department of Agriculture spokesperson Karla Salp told CBS News.

And nests are unlikely to be in any kind of abundance, and even if the hornets have managed to build another one, it would still be in a tiny corner of the Pacific Northwest.

"There's not really an awful lot that's out there for them to feed on except for honeybees," UC entomologist Doug Yanega told Business Insider, so only beekeepers need to be on the lookout for hornet attacks.

"If that doesn't happen, well, number one, that's a good thing in the general sense, and number two, those wasps are going to starve even if they're out there," he said. "There's just not enough other big insects for them to feed on to propagate a colony."

h/t: Scientific American, CBS News, Business Insider