State officials have been bugged lately by people who have mistaken a large, orange insect they have encountered for another creature with a nefarious reputation.
Danielle Evans, horticulture associate with the Nez Perce County extension office, said she has received numerous calls this year about an insect people believe might be an Asian giant hornet — also known as the murder hornet.
“We’ve gotten lots of (calls),” Evans said Thursday. “They started coming in last year.”
The mistaken insect is actually a cicada killer wasp — a large orange and black insect that does have some resemblance to the Asian giant hornet but is a beneficial insect and generally not harmful to humans.
Evans said some callers have been upset by the discovery of the misidentified insect but “there’s also a healthy understanding that it’s not what they think that it is.
“We have examples of both in the office to show people the difference,” Evans said.
The Asian giant hornet created a stir in 2020 when the first-ever sightings in the U.S. were confirmed near Blaine, Wash., and another sighting was confirmed in southwestern Canada.
It is not known how or where the hornet first arrived in North America, but Washington Department of Agriculture and Washington State University scientists undertook an aggressive hunt for nests and last year successfully eradicated a few of them.
Karla Salp, spokesperson for the agriculture department, said Thursday that there have been no sightings of the Asian giant hornet this year.
“We do not have any confirmed detections yet this year,” Salp said. “That does not mean they’re eradicated. We have to have three years of no confirmed sightings before they’re considered eradicated. We’re still trapping through November and if we don’t have any caught this year we have two more years to go” before the hornets will be considered eradicated.
Although Asian giant hornets are considered a culinary delicacy in southeast Asia where they are native and the venom is used to spike alcoholic drinks, they wreak havoc on honey bee colonies and can destroy a hive within minutes. Their stings are big and painful and multiple stings can be fatal to humans.
The cicada killer wasp, on the other hand, is a large, solitary insect that resembles the giant hornet but is docile and beneficial, helping control pests and pollinate flowers. Cicada killer wasps have black abdomens with yellow bands and orange-tinted wings. They also have smaller heads and torsos than Asian giant hornets.
Cicada killer wasps are capable of stinging, Evans said, but are not aggressive toward humans.
“We tell people they’re harmless,” she said. “They just kind of do their thing; feed on cicadas and other insects. If you leave them alone they’ll do their thing and they don’t harm people or plant life. They’re not out there wreaking havoc.”
University of Idaho entomologists run an Idaho insect identification website to help farmers, ranchers and the general public correctly identify insects, arachnids and other arthropods.
The insect identification website has prevented many users from unnecessarily applying pesticide against harmless or beneficial insects, such as cicada killer wasp, according to the website.
Lately, the cicada killer wasp has been by far the most common insect submitted for identification. Female cicada killer wasps hunt cicadas, which they paralyze with their sting and bring back to their subterranean nests. They lay their eggs in cicadas to provide a food source for offspring. Idaho has species of cicadas that hatch annually, but the wasps also feed on stink bugs, grasshoppers and other large insects.
Anyone wishing more information about the cicada killer wasp and other insects in Idaho may visit the website at uidaho.edu/extension/insect-id.
Hedberg may be contacted at khedberg@lmtribune.com.
