North Carolina agriculture officials have confirmed the presence of invasive yellow-legged hornets in the state, and are encouraging residents to look out and set traps for them.
According to a press release Tuesday, the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (NCDA&CS) said that a homeowner in Union County reported seeing "suspicious hornet activity at her hummingbird feeder." After some investigation, officials also found several yellow-legged hornet adults near the Union and Mecklenburg county line. The department has been monitoring for the invasive pest since they were first detected in Savanna, Georgia, in November 2023.
"This aggressive pest of honeybees and other pollinators had been previously localized near Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina, until a population was identified last December in York County, South Carolina, just south of the Charlotte metropolitan area," Bill Foote, director of the NCDA&CS Plant Industry Division, said in a press release.
"This detection prompted us to ramp up surveillance this year in southern Union and Mecklenburg counties," he continued. "North Carolina has thousands of beekeepers statewide, and our apiary team has been working diligently to alert them to the threat yellow-legged hornet poses to their hives."
Yellow-legged hornets are native to tropical and subtropical regions of southeast Asia, and are the most active between March and November. The adults are known for their distinctive yellow legs, dark thorax (or chest), and have a mostly dark abdomen that becomes lighter at the tip. They are roughly an inch long, about the same size as southern yellowjackets and bald-faced hornets. State officials note that they are easily mistaken for other wasps and other hornet species.
Yellow-legged hornet queens start building nests in the spring, which grow throughout the course of the summer. In the late summer, the hornets build secondary nests high in the treetops, which can be larger than basketballs. The nests typically have a brownish or muddy-red color.
State agriculture officials are warning beekeepers and apiary operators to look out for "hawking" behavior, which yellow-legged hornets exhibit by hovering near entrances and capturing honey bees that enter or exit the hive. Yellow-legged hornets have weakened honey bee colonies across Europe since 2004, which has led to declines in honey production.
To help monitor for the pest, North Carolina agriculture officials are asking folks to take photos and report sightings of suspicious hornet activity. Residents and beekeepers are also encouraged to set simple traps for yellow-legged hornets. The trap will catch several types of wasps and hornets, but honey bees are not typically attracted to this trap.
According to the N.C. State University Extension, more than 15,000 beekeepers reside in North Carolina, the most per capita per any state in the country. The North Carolina Association of Beekeepers also has more than 4,000 members and notes on its site that it is the largest state-based beekeeping group in the U.S.
