The stinging Vespa mandarinia can grow as large as 2-1/2 inches (6.35 cm) in length and is native to Southeast Asia, China and Taiwan.

According to British Columbia’s agriculture ministry, a nest was found and destroyed last August at Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, and a single specimen of the hornet was found in November on the B.C. mainland, at White Rock.

On the U.S. side of the border, individual specimens were found in December near Blaine, Wash., just south of White Rock, according to Sven-Erik Spichiger, managing entomologist at the Washington state agriculture department.

Those findings indicate a “probability” that nesting hornets are overwintering in the area, the province said in March, noting wooded habitat offers suitable nesting grounds.

The “murder hornet” presents a danger to agriculture and the apiary industry, Spichiger said, because the insect is known to attack honeybees, with a few of the hornets capable of wiping out an entire hive in hours.

“The hornets enter a ‘slaughter phase’ where they kill bees by decapitating them. They then defend the hive as their own, taking the brood to feed their own young,” according to the Washington state department of agriculture website.

“Pollination is a huge part of agriculture and the agricultural systems we have here in the United States. And so if this were to become well-established and then start spreading, it could be pretty catastrophic,” Spichiger said.

Also. if provoked, “an Asian giant hornet can sting you multiple times and deliver larger doses of venom just because of the size of them. The venom itself is fairly toxic and creates localized necrosis around the wound so you’ll see melting flesh around the wound,” he told Reuters.

“What we’re told from the literature is that most people can survive one or two stings,” he said. “But if you sustain multiple stings, the necrosis and the venom will actually start getting into your bloodstream and will start working on your organs. And multiple stings could literally be fatal.”

Scientists don’t know for sure how the murder hornet made its way to the region. The most likely scenario is that it arrived on a container ship. Intentional transport of the bug into the United States would violate federal law.

Following the discovery of the first hornet, a web page set up by Washington state agriculture officials to report additional sightings of the insect has received several hundred reports, Spichiger said.

British Columbia’s agriculture ministry also wants people in the region who may have seen Asian giant hornets to report sightings to the Invasive Species Council of B.C., with photos if possible.

The ministry noted several large insects common to the region — such as yellow jackets, bald faced hornets, elm sawflies and horntail wasps — could be mistaken for Asian giant hornets.

While Asian giant hornets do not generally target people, pets or large livestock, they can attack when threatened or if their nest is disturbed.

“We really don’t want any private citizen trying to mess with an Asian giant hornet nest. Typical beekeeping attire will simply not protect you. The stinger on this insect is six millimeters long and will go readily through most clothes,” Spichiger said.

— Reporting for Reuters by Omar Younis; writing by Dan Whitcomb. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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Tests carried out by a team from the University of Illinois showed bees preferred to collect sugar syrup laced with the fungicide chlorothalonil over sugar syrup alone.

The finding follows other studies linking fungicides to a worldwide plunge in honeybee and wild bee populations which are crucial for pollinating crops.

“Bees are kind of like humans in that they sometimes like things that aren’t necessarily good for them,” said University of Illinois entomology professor May Berenbaum, who led the research.

She said fungicides were bad news for bees because they could exacerbate the toxicity of pesticides and kill off beneficial fungi in hives.

Her team set up two feeding stations in an enclosure allowing the bees to choose sugar syrup laced with a test chemical or without. The chemicals included three fungicides and two herbicides at various concentrations.

The researchers were taken aback to find the bees choosing one of the fungicides.

Chlorothalonil, sold under various brand names including Syngenta’s Bravo, is registered in Canada for disease control in various pulse, fruit and vegetable crops and in wheat.

“It was a surprise when they actually liked them,” Berenbaum told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone, adding that it could explain why fungicide contamination in hives was so common.

“This is not anything that anyone had even thought about before so we need to readjust our focus because there certainly could be implications for agriculture…”

However, she said the bees actively avoided a second tested fungicide and were neutral about a third.

The scientists said the findings were “worrisome” in light of research showing fungicides interfere with honey bees’ ability to metabolize pesticides used by beekeepers to kill parasitic mites that infest their hives.

The scientists were also surprised to find the bees showed a taste for the widely used herbicide glyphosate.

A study by the Center for Biological Diversity last year said hundreds of native bee species in North America and Hawaii were sliding towards extinction.

It said bees provided more than US$3 billion in fruit-pollination services each year in the U.S.

Experts have blamed habitat loss, heavy pesticide use, climate change and increasing urbanization for declining numbers.

The United Nations recently announced an annual World Bee Day on May 20 to raise awareness of their importance and declining numbers.

— Reporting by Emma Batha for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, which covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Includes files from AGCanada.com Network staff.

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The University of Guelph team, led by toxicologist Keith Solomon and adjunct professor Gladys Stephenson, analyzed 64 papers from “open, peer-reviewed literature” on the topic plus 170 unpublished studies submitted to regulators by the products’ manufacturers, Syngenta and Bayer.

The scientists, who on Monday published their findings online across five papers in the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, said Bayer and Syngenta asked them to assess earlier studies conducted by or for the companies, on the impacts of pesticide-treated seeds on honeybees.

Solomon and Stephenson used a “quantitative weight of evidence” methodology, meant to gauge the quality of reported data and to compare relevance of results from different studies.

The “higher-tier” studies which Solomon and Stephenson examined were focused on the exposures of honeybees to neonicotinoids by way of “several” matrices as measured in the field, and on the effects seen in “experimentally controlled” field studies.

The Guelph team’s study involved Bayer’s clothianidin and imidacloprid and Syngenta’s thiamethoxam, all used in seed treatments for various field crops.

The original papers, Solomon said, varied in quality and “scientific rigour,” but their results generally showed no adverse effects of pesticides on honeybee hives.

For all three products, the “overall weight of evidence,” based on the studies analyzed, indicated “no adverse effects on colony viability or survival of the colony,” the team wrote in the Journal.

“At least for honeybees, these products are not a major concern,” Solomon said in a university release Tuesday — though he granted the three pesticides can kill individual honeybees, and could also pose threats to other pollinators.

That said, “use of these neonics under good agricultural practices does not present a risk to honeybees at the level of the colony.”

“Many studies look at effects of insecticides on individual bees,” he said in a release Tuesday. However, “what regulations try to protect is the colony — the reproductive unit.”

Other researchers, he said, might use the Guelph team’s results to improve studies of pesticide exposure in hives.

The Guelph researchers also stressed the importance of “good agricultural practices” in farmers’ neonic use, including making sure the treated seeds are coated and planted properly to avoid airborne contamination of bees during seeding.

The Guelph team’s results don’t necessarily apply to other insects that also serve as crop pollinators and that have shown population declines, Solomon said.

For those, he said, “there are too few studies at the colony or field level to allow a weight-of-evidence analysis.”

The team said bees and other pollinators are affected by “potentially harmful” factors, including long-distance movement of colonies for crop pollination, as well as mites and viruses, weather, insufficient food and “varying beekeeping practices.” — AGCanada.com Network

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The province’s agriculture department last month quarantined 12 beekeepers’ colonies that were in “close proximity” to colonies imported from an Ontario beekeeper to pollinate wild blueberries in the Acadian Peninsula.

However, the department said Friday, two beetles have also been confirmed in the past week in colonies from two different beekeepers in Riviere-du-Portage and Aulac.

Thus, the department said, its quarantine may be extended to other beekeepers within a three-kilometre radius.

Agriculture Minister Rick Doucet said department staff are working with the New Brunswick Beekeepers Association through a monitoring program.

The province, he said, is “taking measures aimed at preventing the beetle from becoming established in our province.”

All suspected small hive beetle specimens should be immediately reported to the provincial apiarist, the department said.

Small hive beetle is generally considered a pest of weak bee colonies. Large beetle populations can affect honeybee health, spoil honey and damage beekeeping equipment.

There is only one registered treatment in Canada for affected colonies. CheckMite+, a coumaphos miticide pest strip made by Bayer, is approved for use against small hive beetle and varroa mites.

The beetle first appeared in the U.S. in 1998 in Florida and made its first appearance in Canada in 2002 in Manitoba.

According to the agriculture ministry in Ontario, where the beetle was first found in 2010, it still “remains unknown” whether it will establish a resident population in that province. — AGCanada.com Network

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