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And that's a good thing.
Researchers say it's progress because they want to eradicate the vicious insects before they wipe out bee colonies and cause harm to humans here.
Even beekeeper suits are not protection from a sting from the Asian giant hornet, which kills dozens of humans annually in Japan.
The insect was captured near Custer, Washington in a bottle trap near where a mated queen was found dead earlier this year and a suspected bee kill was reported in 2019, the Washington State Department of Agriculture said in a statement.
The trap was collected on Wednesday, July 29 and processed in WSDA’s entomology lab on Thursday, Aug. 13.
“Trapping a male Asian giant hornet in July initially came as a surprise,” Sven Spichiger, WSDA managing entomologist said. “But further examination of the research and consultation with international experts confirmed that a few males can indeed emerge early in the season.”
WSDA will be setting live traps in the area in an attempt to trap a live Asian giant hornet, tag it, and track it back to its nest. If WSDA is able to locate a nest, the agency will eradicate it.
The first Asian giant hornet was caught in the US on Tuesday, July 14, also in Whatcom County, located in northwest Washington State, south of Vancouver, British Columbia.
That hornet was an unmated queen, entomologists from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service said.
The two trapped specimens bring the total number of Asian giant hornets detected in America to seven – all of them in Whatcom County.
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