Murder hornets have been plaguing North America since 2019 and, even though they haven’t killed anybody, they have caused widespread fear among citizens. The nests are being found in Washington State and officials are hard at work to remove them.

The second nest of the year has been eradicated, as a tweet from the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA) stated. They also said that a third nest has been located and officials are working to eradicate this one too.

According to CNN, the first hornet nest of this year was eradicated in late August in Whatcom County. The nest had nine layers of comb and almost 1,500 hornets in varying sizes and stages of development. Officials vacuumed the 113 working hornets from the nest, and they also caught an additional 67 hornets with nets. According to the WSDA website, they are planning to continue with the catching and eradication of these murder hornets through the end of November 2021. 

The New York Times reported that the WSDA is working with local, state, and federal partners to prevent the hornets from establishing in the US. The Hornets earned their name, due to the mass slaughter of bees. The bees were killed by decapitation, according to officials. They are from the regions of Northern India to East Asia. They eat honeybees and other insects and some hornets can manage to destroy an entire hive in a few hours.

National Geographic said that the hornet is considered an invasive species in the US and it was first reported in the Vancouver Island area of Canada in August 2019 and has been detected in the northwest corner of Washington state, according to the USDA.