Japanese giant hornet — printable fact sheet
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Japanese giant hornet
Vespa mandarinia japonica
Vespa mandarinia japonica is the largest hornet in the world, with queens up to 5 cm and a wingspan around 7 cm, and its impact on honeybees is the reason it is famous. A single scout that finds a hive marks it with a pheromone, and then a raiding party of a few dozen hornets ar…
Did you know?
- A small group of Japanese giant hornets can destroy an entire honeybee hive in just a few hours, decapitating the bees and carrying larvae back to their nest.
- The bee ball wins by margins of a couple of degrees; the bees are running their own bodies within two degrees of death to kill the hornet. The hornet's venom contains a cytolytic peptide that dissolves tissue and an alarm pheromone that summons nestmates, which is why disturbing one hornet can trigger an escalating attack. The "murder hornet" panic in North America centred on a small incursion in Washington State and British Columbia, which was declared eradicated in 2024.
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