Christine Moses was playing Scrabble with her husband in their Ottawa home this spring when she looked outside the window and shrieked. "I just saw this gigantic beast crawling up the window," Moses said. After taking a picture of the giant insect, Moses asked her husband to eliminate the intruder with a fly swatter.
She then posted the photo of the bug to a Facebook community group, in the hopes someone could identify it. Moses soon got an answer back: it was a European hornet. European hornets are typically around two and a half centimetres long.
(Simon Smith/CBC ) They're not 'murder hornets' Moses isn't the only one who's come across the bigger-than-usual hornets lately. Social media posts of European hornets have been popping up in Ottawa and across the province, with some local residents believing they've encountered so-called "murder hornets" — otherwise known as northern giant hornets, the world's largest hornet species. The presence of northern giant hornets, which are native to Asia and have only recently been introduced to North America.
, became a hot topic in 2019 when authorities in Nanaimo, B.C., reported encounters with these insects.
The hornets can destroy honey bee colonies in less than 24 hours. If they establish themselves in Ontario, they could pose a significant threat to native biodiversity and agriculture, according to the province. Video B.
C. to increase efforts to wipe out invasive Asian giant hornets No northern giant hornets found in 2022 in Wash.
