LSU AgCenter Says Murder Hornets Likely not a Threat to Louisianians

Finally, some good news.

Our national news cycle has been primarily two things over the past few weeks. The first, of course, the Coronavirus. The second, equally as scary as the first, Murder Hornets.

The name alone is enough to send shivers down your spine, I mean, after all, anything with "Murder" in its name absolutely cannot be good. The Murder Hornets are quite the beasts, boasting the ability to destroy and kill an entire beehive and it's population in virtually no time at all. These things also pack a serious and potentially fatal stinger for humans.

Don't believe me? Just ask my boy Coyote Peterson. Peterson gained his fame by taking the wilderness head-on, and experiencing some of the most painful bites and stings nature can offer.

The good news? Coyote lived to tell the tale of his murder Hornet sting. The bad news? It hurt like hell.

In the days of constant stress and worry, LSU AgCenter is offering soothing words for our worrying minds when it comes to these Murder Hornets.

The AgCenter points tot the fact that only a handful of these hornets have been located in our entire country, and those were found (and contained) in Washington state. They point to the simple fact that Louisiana is quite a long way from those wasps found in Washington and that migrating to Louisiana would be no easy task, being as these Hornets need to maintain a colony.

Entomologist Kristen Healey says, "It’s not like if you had a few hornets that were getting out, they couldn’t really establish a colony on its own.  You really need a queen that has been mated in order to disperse and establish colonies."

She also points out that the wasps found and kept in Washington were located between September to December of 2019, and she continues by saying, "There haven’t been any additional collections anywhere else in the United States outside of that area.”

So rest easy Louisianians, it doesn't look like we'll be getting visits from Murder Hornets anytime soon.