On a muggy day in June, Don Hopkins was conducting a routine bee inspection when his phone rang.
Hopkins is an apiarist at the N.C. Department of Agriculture, and visiting hives around the state to check for pests and disease is part of his job. The bees need a clean bill of health before their keepers can sell or transport them out of state. Hopkins had been lifting frames, alive with furry industry, from a row of hives at an industrial-scale store in Raleigh when he got the call.
“She found what?” he yelped to his colleague. The department had received a credible report from Charlotte that there had been a sighting of the Vespa velutina, known colloquially as a yellow-legged hornet. The bloodthirsty invasive species that devours honeybees with abandon has been slaughtering its way north from Georgia since 2023, but this would be the first official sighting in our state.
Hopkins pulled up his email and zoomed in on the picture his colleague sent. It showed a blur of black and gold, a tangle of legs and transparent wings. “I think I’m gonna be going down to Charlotte tomorrow,” Hopkins said.
It turned out to be a false alarm; the yellow-legged hornet resembles other insects, and this one was probably just a paper wasp, which is harmless. Hopkins breathed a sigh of relief on behalf of everyone in North Carolina’s robust beekeeping community.
The real call came a month later.
Last week, a Union County woman noticed strange hornets snooping around her hummingbird feeder and called the state. Inspectors raced in and, according to a press release from the agriculture department, found additional hornets on the border between Union and Mecklenburg counties. After three years of false alarms, the yellow-legged hornet was officially here.
This hornet appeared in France in 2004 and has since spread across nine countries in Western Europe. Studies have found that the hornets have killed up to 30% of French honeybees every year since then, with an annual estimated economic loss of up to 30 million euros. Research out of the United Kingdom showed that, in addition to honeybees, the hornets feed on two kinds of bumblebees—meaning that their diet consists of Europe’s top pollinators. And in some parts of Europe like Galicia and Portugal, the hornets will snack on sweet fruits like grapes, with up to 83% of farmers reporting crop damage.
Since the hornet was first spotted in Savannah, Georgia, three years ago, it has been making its way north at an estimated 50 miles per year.
Greg Wiggins, the biological control administrator at the state Department of Agriculture, said that, since the hornet is still a newcomer here, there’s a major need for research on its biology and behavior in North America. Honeybees and other local pollinators comprise more than 60 percent of these hornets’ diets. “When you’re taking that much of a species out of the system in a localized area, it can have drastic impacts,” Wiggins said.
Needless to say, officials are worried.
“When you’re taking that much of a species out of the system in a localized area, it can have drastic impacts.”
Greg Wiggins, biological control administrator at NCDCA
So are beekeepers. The honeybee is North Carolina’s state insect, and our state is home to the largest beekeeping association in the country, with more than 4,000 members. These bee-lovers, hobbyists, and professionals alike are preparing to defend their beloved pollinators.
“They went through Europe in about 20 years,” said Whitaker Grannis, president of the Cumberland County Beekeepers Association. “I hope it doesn’t come to that here, but I think it’s time to start preparing for it.”
They’re Coming to America
Here’s how the hornets likely arrived in the U.S., according to Grannis: Around four years ago, a yellow-legged hornet queen buzzed into a shipping container in her native home of China. Months later, she landed at the port of Savannah. Queens mate in the fall and gestate over winter; as soon as she established a nest, she started churning out hundreds more like her.
“The biology of these insects is so, so invasive,” said Grannis. “They’ve evolved to invade new territory.”
Threats to honeybees are nothing new. These scrappy pollinators are valued both for their cuteness and for their essential contributions to agriculture, which is a $111 billion industry in North Carolina. But they’ve faced colony collapse disorder, parasites, mites, and more over the past decades.
The yellow-legged hornet is a particularly gruesome and pernicious predator. They are not the same as the giant “murder hornets” that captured the collective imagination when they invaded Washington state in 2019—but they’re still pretty murderous. Beekeepers usually detect them because of something called hawking behavior. When hungry, the hornets scope out a beehive then body-check each other for a prime spot at the hive entrance. There, they lie in wait for worker bees to come home.
Hopkins described this behavior as “like a hockey goalie,” but the results are more House of the Dragon than Heated Rivalry. When worker bees return exhausted from foraging, the hornets attack. They behead the bees, devour their protein-rich insides, and then leave their corpses in a heap. Sometimes they even cart the bodies home to their own nests to show off.
“There are stories about beekeepers coming back and their hive is in really bad shape, with a pile of dead honeybees with their heads all ripped off,” said Grannis. Eventually, forager bees stop leaving to look for sustenance, and the hives die.
The hornets are also prolific. In spring, mated queens emerge from hibernation to establish a nest and raise workers. As their population expands throughout the summer, the workers venture out in droves to prey on honeybees. The whole cycle begins again each fall. What makes yellow-legged hornets distinct, besides their bloodthirstiness, is their ability to reproduce exponentially. Each new nest, which can grow to four feet tall and house up to 1,000 spawn, can produce up to 600 queens, and up to 50% survive. Each of those 300 queens can then spur a new nest.
The N.C. Department of Agriculture has inherited several nests to use as educational materials. Hopkins keeps one, which he’s nicknamed “Top Gun,” in his truck. It’s the size of a car tire and the color of sand, made of papery whorls and sunken caves and studded with combs. It looks like it was designed by a demented troll.
Hopkins and other bee aficionados are hopeful that Top Guns won’t spread throughout our state. They’re currently hunting for the nest in Union and Mecklenburg Counties so they can destroy it before the hornet spreads. But some beekeepers, like Grannis, say it’s time to prepare for the worst.
Grannis started keeping bees when he moved back to his home state from Denver 14 years ago. I met him on a farm outside Hope Mills, where the Cumberland County Bee Association keeps hives for education and training for its members. The row of hives crouches at the edge of the treeline.
Wearing a mesh bee hat, orange gloves, and a neck fan to stave off the summer heat, Grannis stuffed his smoker (a small handheld device used to drive bees out of their hive with smoke) with Amazon packaging and the pine needles so ubiquitous in the Sandhill region. He lit the smoker, approached a hive from behind, and gently lifted the lid. It was stuck to the rest of the structure with sticky, resin-like propolis—bee glue.
This hive originally established itself in the wall of a house. A beekeeper saved it by meticulously cutting it out and nursing it back to health, then donated it to the association for educational purposes.
As soon as they realized their hive was open, the bees roared to life. Grannis lifted up a frame, searching for the queen. Like most beekeepers, Grannis adores his bees. And for the last three years, he’s feared that the arrival of their worst predator is only a matter of time.
A Real Buzz Kill
Hopkins, Keller, and other experts carry pocket-sized information cards with images of native hornets to compare with the newcomers.
The European hornet, which was introduced to the U.S. in the 1840s and doesn’t pose a threat to honeybees, sports all-yellow legs. Confusingly, the yellow-legged hornet’s legs are only half yellow, like it’s wearing socks. The visual similarities could explain why Hopkins received nearly 400 false alarms before the real call came this month. In some parts of Europe, scientists are using high-tech tracking methods to root out the yellow-legged hornets, including attaching tiny transmitters to the insects to track the hornets back to their nests. But here in North Carolina, the methods are simple and low-cost—a citizen-science initiative rooted in passion.
Hopkins and other bee inspectors are giving presentations to the 82 county beekeeping associations around the state. Officials and volunteers are handing out educational materials at state fairs, green industry shows, all sorts of agriculture-themed events. Wiggins said the state is planning to hire an outreach coordinator. With approximately 50,000 beekeepers in North Carolina, they have a lot to do.
“Beekeepers are going to be the first to spot it—they’ll be out around their bees and they’ll see this hawking behavior,” said Jennifer Keller, a research specialist and apiary expert at NC State University who was out on the inspection circuit with Hopkins in June.
“There are stories about beekeepers coming back and their hive is in really bad shape, with a pile of dead honeybees with their heads all ripped off.”
Whitaker Grannis, Cumberland County Beekeepers Association
She and her colleagues tell beekeepers if they spot a suspicious hornet, they should call their county beekeeping association and state inspectors immediately. The six inspectors covering separate geographical territories in the state are ready to race into the field to determine if it’s actually the fearsome pest, and, if so, trace it back to its nest.
Traps are an essential tool in hornet tracking. They aren’t fancy: just a white half-gallon jug with a square hole cut in the side. Beekeepers fill these jugs with so-called “Georgia juice,” a mix of brown sugar and grape juice that is available for purchase, but easy to make at home. Bees don’t like it, but hornets do. The hope is that thirsty hornets stop on their way to the beehive for a drink, fall in, and drown. Then officials can examine them to confirm their species.
Once hornets are confirmed in an area, officials will then set out traps containing just a little bit of Georgia juice—enough to lure the hornets, but not enough to kill them. More than 200 such traps now dot the landscape around the home where the hornets made their first known North Carolina incursion. Once the hornets visit the traps and fly off, bee inspectors can trail them to their nests.
Hopkins has traps up at the Piedmont Triad Farmers Market in Greensboro and the State Farmers Market in Raleigh in case a yellow-legged hornet hitches a ride into the heart of the state on an agricultural truck.
The Bee’s Needs
At the North Carolina State Beekeepers Association meeting in Winston-Salem earlier this month, state agriculture representatives handed out trap after trap.
Wiggins explained to the steady stream of concerned beekeepers that the traps each have two QR codes, one to log when you set it, and one to sound the alarm if you see an insect sporting yellow knee-highs.
Anthony Badeaux of Catawba Valley Beekeepers also stopped by for a trap because he has “a problem with the local hornets using my apiary as a pantry.” In early July, he remained hopeful that our southern neighbor’s efforts, spearheaded by an academic and state regulatory partnership at Clemson University, would contain the predators.
What worries him most is that he’s a weekend beekeeper. If something showed up to menace his hives on a Tuesday, by the time he notices it might be too late. “It’s like leaving your kid behind in a grocery cart,” said Badeaux.
That kind of sentiment is common among North Carolina’s beekeepers. In some states, beekeeping is largely a commercial enterprise. In California, for example, vast agricultural operations rely on bees to pollinate their crops. While commercial beekeepers are an essential here, too, our state is also home to thousands of hobbyists. Many are retirees. Some are veterans who keep bees to work through PTSD. Beekeepers describe this as a “way of life.” They tell stories about starting with a casual hive or two and then getting sucked in with dozens.
In short, the hornets are messing with an insect that’s beloved to thousands of North Carolinians.
“Most people who are beekeepers are very, very passionate about keeping their bees healthy, keeping them safe,” said Grannis.
At the conference, beekeepers walked away from the booth with armfuls of pamphlets, stickers, pens, and those orb-like traps, ready to return to the far-flung reaches of the state and guard their hives, ready for whatever is to come.
