The world’s largest crab, nicknamed the raiding herd “To kill the crab” for a dangerous stinger and the ability to kill a honey beehive in as little as 90 minutes has been declared in the US, five years after it was first spotted in Washington state near the Canadian border.
Washington and the US Department of Agriculture announced the eradication on Wednesday, saying there have been no detections of giant hornets in northern Washington after 2021.
The announcement represented an immense success and was accomplished in part by residents agreeing to place traps on their properties and watching, as well as researchers capturing a live hornet, attaching a tiny radio tracker to a dental brook and following it through the forest to a nest in an alder tree. Scientists destroyed the nest just as many queens were beginning to emerge, officials said.
“I’ve got to tell you, as an entomologist I’ve been doing this for 25 years now, and it’s a rare day when people actually win one against insects,” Sven Spichiger, pest program manager of the Washington State Department of Agriculture told a virtual news conference.
The hornets, which can be 2 inches (5 cm) long and were once called Asian giant hornets, gained attention in 2013 when they killed 42 people in China and seriously injured 1,675.
Northern giant hornets pose a significant threat to native pollinators and insects. A honey bee can destroy hives in just 90 minutes, take off the bees, and then defend their hive, taking the brood to feed their young.
Crabs were first detected in North America in British Columbia, Canada, in August 2019 and confirmed in Washington state in December 2019, when a Whatcom County resident reported the sample. Mementarius also reported that the alves were attacked and specimens invaded in the summer of 2020. The crabs could have traveled to North America in plant pots or shipping containers, experts said.
The DNA evidence of the residents found in British Columbia and Washington were not related and appeared to originate from different countries. There have also been no confirmed reports in British Columbia as of 2021, and the Invasive Species Center of Canada has said that hornets are also thought to be eradicated there.
The hornet’s sting can be very great, and deliver about seven times the amount of poison in honey, and sting many times. At one point, the Washington Department of Agriculture ordered special shipments from China.
Washington state is the only one that has confirmed reports of northern giant hornets. Trappers found four nests in 2020 and 2021.
Spichiger said Washington will remain on the lookout, though reporting eradication. He noted that entomologists continue to monitor traps in Kitsap County, where a resident reported a confirmed sighting in October but where efforts to capture and publicize them have been futile.
“Let us watch,” said Spichiger.