Animal
Northern giant hornet
The northern giant hornet is the biggest hornet in the world. Some people call it the Asian giant hornet. It is orange and brown, and it lives in big families under the ground.
The northern giant hornet, once called the Asian giant hornet, is the world's largest hornet. It lives in forests of eastern Asia, where each colony is started by one queen in an underground nest. Its workers hunt other insects, including honey bees, to feed the young hornets.
Vespa mandarinia, named the northern giant hornet by the Entomological Society of America in 2022, is the world's largest hornet. Native to temperate and tropical eastern Asia, it builds underground colonies of up to about 200 workers and preys on beetles, other wasps and honey bees. After it reached British Columbia and Washington in 2019, officials found and destroyed four nests and declared it eradicated from the United States in December 2024.
Photo: KENPEI, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Meet the giant hornet
The northern giant hornet is a very big wasp. Its other name is the Asian giant hornet.
It has an orange head and a striped brown and yellow body. It lives in a big family with a queen. It is best to watch hornets from far away.
The northern giant hornet is the largest hornet in the world. A queen can be about 5 centimeters long, about as long as a grown-up's thumb. It has a wide orange head, dark eyes, strong jaws and a body striped in yellow and brown.
Scientists used to call it the Asian giant hornet. In 2022, insect scientists in the United States chose the name northern giant hornet, because it lives farther north in Asia than its look-alike, the southern giant hornet. You may also have heard a scary nickname for it in the news. Scientists think that nickname is too sensational: these hornets do not hunt people.
Vespa mandarinia (family Vespidae) is the world's largest hornet. The University of Florida's profile notes its unusually wide head, a deeply scalloped clypeus above the mandibles and pronounced cheeks (genae) that house the muscles powering its large mandibles. Workers are slightly shorter than 5 centimeters and queens close to 5 centimeters.
In July 2022 the Entomological Society of America added northern giant hornet to its official list of insect common names; the society had never adopted a name for the species before, and it had been widely called the Asian giant hornet. As Science News reported, the proposal, from Chris Looney of the Washington State Department of Agriculture, avoided a geographic name that was uninformative and could feed anti-Asian bias. Scientists consider the press nickname "murder hornet" far too sensational: the hornets do not hunt people.
Quick facts
- Group
- Invertebrate
- Length
- 3.8 to 5.1 cm
Where it lives
Giant hornets live in Asia.
They live in forests and in the mountains. Their nests are under the ground, often near the roots of trees.
Northern giant hornets live in eastern Asia, in countries such as Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, northern India and parts of Russia. They like temperate forests and mountains, but some live in warmer, subtropical places too.
In 2019, a few giant hornets were found far from home, in British Columbia in Canada and in Washington State in the United States. They probably arrived by accident, carried on ships. Scientists and neighbors worked together to find and remove their nests.
The North Central IPM Center describes the species as native to temperate and tropical eastern Asia, widely distributed through northern India, Myanmar, Laos, Korea, China, Taiwan, Japan and parts of Russia; the University of Florida also lists Thailand and Nepal. It favors temperate regions, including mountains, but also occurs in some subtropical environments.
Nests are almost always underground, in rotten tree roots, cavities or abandoned burrows; above-ground nests in tree hollows are rare, and one study counted only 3 nests in buildings out of 1,756. In 2019 the hornet was detected in British Columbia and Whatcom County, Washington, probably introduced through international shipping. It never became established in North America.
Continent
Its habitats
Where can you find this animal?
- Lives here naturally · Countries and seas named by a scientific source
- Sightings recorded · Records of wild sightings (GBIF)
Lives here naturally · Countries and seas named by a scientific source
Temperate and tropical eastern Asia: Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, northern India, Myanmar, Laos and parts of the Russian Far East (North Central IPM Center), with Nepal and Thailand also listed by the University of Florida. Countries are shaded whole; hornets live only in part of each. Nests found in British Columbia and Washington in 2019–2021 were destroyed, and the hornet was declared eradicate
Places: Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, India, Myanmar, Laos, Russia and 2 more places.
Source: https://www.ncipmc.org/communications/pest-alerts/northern-giant-hornet/ · checked October 2026
Sightings recorded · Records of wild sightings (GBIF)
Counts of GBIF records of wild observations (human and machine) and preserved specimens. Records include introduced populations, vagrants, escaped or released animals and misidentifications, so a country with records is not necessarily part of the native range.
Wild sightings have been recorded in Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, India, Bhutan, Thailand, Namibia and 9 more places.
Source: gbif · checked October 2026
Range maps show where scientists say an animal lives, often country by country. An animal may live in only part of a country shown, and sightings records can include animals that wandered far from home.
What it eats
Giant hornets catch other insects.
They take them home to feed the baby hornets. The grown-up hornets drink sweet sap from trees.
Northern giant hornets are hunters. Workers catch insects such as big beetles, caterpillars, praying mantises, other wasps and honey bees. They chew their catch into a soft paste and carry it home to feed the larvae, the young hornets growing in the nest.
Adults also drink sweet tree sap for energy. The larvae, in turn, give off a liquid that the adult hornets drink.
Insect prey supplies protein for the larvae. The University of Florida reports that the species most often takes large beetles, along with honey bees and other vespid wasps; the North Central IPM Center adds caterpillars, chafer beetles and praying mantises. Workers usually hunt about 2 kilometers from the nest but have been recorded up to 8 kilometers away.
Prey is chewed into a paste and fed to the larvae, which in turn release a liquid from their salivary glands that the adults consume. Adults, including queens fresh from winter, also feed on tree sap, and nestmates may gather at a sap flow and keep other hornet species away.
Did you know?
Most giant hornet nests are under the ground.
Giant hornets almost always nest underground. One study found only 3 nests in buildings out of 1,756.
Matsuura and Koike (2002) reported only three nests in human buildings among 1,756 nests observed.
Built big
A giant hornet has a big orange head and strong jaws.
It has four wings, six legs and two feelers. Only the girls have a stinger.
A northern giant hornet has a big, wide orange head with large eyes, plus three tiny extra eyes between them, called ocelli. Its strong jaws, or mandibles, are powered by big muscles in its cheeks. It has two antennae, six legs and four wings.
Like other hornets, only the females, the queen and the workers, have a stinger. Male hornets cannot sting. Its body is covered in a tough outer layer, so honey bee stings cannot get through it.
The head, thorax and abdomen are stout and variably hairy. Besides compound eyes, the hornet has three ocelli between the eyes. The pronounced genae hold the muscles for the large mandibles, which it uses to overpower prey and to shape wood fibers into nest comb. Abdominal bands are yellow and brown, with the last segment uniformly yellow.
Only queens and workers carry a stinger, which the University of Florida describes as smooth and nearly a centimeter long; males are stingless. The cuticle is robust enough that European honey bees' stings do not deter the hornet.
A colony's year
In spring, a queen hornet wakes up.
She makes a nest under the ground and lays eggs. Her daughters help her. In fall, new queens fly away and sleep through the winter.
Each colony lasts only one year. In spring, a queen comes out of the soil where she spent the winter. She drinks tree sap, finds a hollow near tree roots and builds a comb of cells from chewed wood. She lays eggs and feeds the first larvae all by herself.
After about a month, her first workers appear and take over the hunting and building. By fall a colony can have 150 to 200 workers. Then new queens and males hatch. The new queens mate, dig into the soil and wait out the winter, while the old queen and her workers die.
Mated queens leave diapause in spring, feed on tree sap and found nests, often in a cavity near tree roots, building comb from chewed wood fibers and enlarging the space by carrying out balls of soil. The queen alone raises the first brood, laying up to five eggs a day; workers emerge 30 to 40 days after the colony starts. Larvae pass through five instars, then pupate for nearly 18 days in capped cells.
A mature nest has 4 to 12 combs and up to about 3,000 cells, with 150 to 200 workers at the peak. Around the end of October new queens and males emerge; males wait at nest entrances to mate. Mated queens overwinter in soil for nearly seven months, while the founding queen dies around mid-November and the colony quickly declines.
Hunters and honey bees
Giant hornets hunt in teams.
Sometimes they visit honey bee homes. Some honey bees in Asia have a clever trick: they huddle around a hornet and make it very, very warm.
A giant hornet can hunt alone, catching one insect at a time. In late summer, groups of hornets sometimes attack a whole honey bee hive together and carry off the bee larvae to feed their own young.
Honey bees that live in Asia have a clever defense. Many bees cluster around a hornet in a tight ball and heat it up, to about 46 °C. That is too hot for the hornet, but not for the bees. European honey bees have not evolved this defense.
Workers hunt singly at hive entrances, taking one bee at a time from many colonies. In late summer, when colonies have many workers, groups of about 10 to 20 or more can stage a coordinated attack on a single colony, overcoming its guards and then taking the larvae and pupae; the University of Florida reports a colony of about 30,000 honey bees can be destroyed within hours.
The Asian honey bee (Apis cerana), which evolved alongside the hornet, defends by "balling": workers surround a hornet and raise the ball's temperature to about 46 °C, enough to kill the hornet but not the bees. The European honey bee (Apis mellifera) lacks effective defenses, which is among the main reasons the hornet's arrival in North America caused such concern for beekeeping and crop pollination.
Did you know?
Scientists put tiny tags on hornets to follow them home.
To find hidden nests, scientists attached tiny radio tags to hornets and followed them back home.
WSDA used radio telemetry on captured hornets to locate the first US nest, in a hollow alder, in October 2020.
Hornets and people
In Asia, giant hornets are part of the forest.
Far from home, in North America, people found the few hornets that arrived and took away their nests. Now there are none in the United States.
In Asia, northern giant hornets are a normal part of nature. In Korea they are even a conservation priority, because cutting down forests has taken away their homes.
In North America, though, they did not belong. They could have harmed honey bees, which farmers need to pollinate crops. Washington scientists, beekeepers and neighbors set traps and reported sightings, and they found and removed four nests. After three years with no hornets found, officials declared them gone from the United States in December 2024.
There is no IUCN assessment. In its native range the hornet plays a role in the ecosystem, and the North Central IPM Center notes it is a conservation priority species in Korea, where deforestation has caused habitat loss. In parts of its native range, people eat the larvae as a delicacy.
In North America it was treated as an invasive pest. WSDA found the first US nest in October 2020 in a hollow alder, using radio tags attached to hornets, and destroyed three more in 2021. The public provided half of the confirmed detections. After three years of surveys with no detections, WSDA and USDA declared it eradicated on December 18, 2024. Like other stinging insects, it stings mainly to defend its nest; its sting is painful and delivers a large dose of venom, yet the North Central IPM Center says it probably does not pose a serious human health risk, and asks people not to kill large wasps they suspect are giant hornets but to report them.
Did you know?
People helped find the giant hornets in Washington.
In Washington State, members of the public reported half of all the confirmed giant hornet sightings.
Public reports provided half of the confirmed detections in Washington, including some that led scientists to nests.
Amazing facts
-
Giant hornet babies give the grown-ups a drink.
Adult hornets feed chewed-up insects to the larvae, and the larvae give back a liquid that the adults drink.
Larvae release a salivary secretion that adult workers consume, an exchange of food within the colony.
-
Most giant hornet nests are under the ground.
Giant hornets almost always nest underground. One study found only 3 nests in buildings out of 1,756.
Matsuura and Koike (2002) reported only three nests in human buildings among 1,756 nests observed.
-
People helped find the giant hornets in Washington.
In Washington State, members of the public reported half of all the confirmed giant hornet sightings.
Public reports provided half of the confirmed detections in Washington, including some that led scientists to nests.
-
Scientists put tiny tags on hornets to follow them home.
To find hidden nests, scientists attached tiny radio tags to hornets and followed them back home.
WSDA used radio telemetry on captured hornets to locate the first US nest, in a hollow alder, in October 2020.
Words to know
- colony
- a group of insects that live and work together
- queen
- the female that starts a colony and lays the eggs
- invasive species
- a living thing that spreads in a place where it does not naturally live and can cause harm
- eradicate
- to remove something completely from a place
- ocelli
- small simple eyes on top of an insect's head
- larva
- the young, growing stage of an insect
Discovery challenge
-
Where do giant hornets make their nests?
Where do northern giant hornets usually build their nests?
Where are Vespa mandarinia nests most often located?
- Underground
- On the beach
- In the clouds
Show the answer
Underground
Under the ground, often near tree roots.
Underground, in rotten tree roots or old burrows.
Underground in rotten roots, cavities or abandoned burrows; above-ground nests are rare.
-
Who starts a giant hornet family?
Who starts a new giant hornet colony in spring?
How is a Vespa mandarinia colony founded?
- A group of males
- One queen
- Honey bees
Show the answer
One queen
One queen starts the family all by herself.
A single queen who spent the winter in the soil starts the nest and raises the first young alone.
By a single mated queen emerging from diapause, who raises the first brood until workers take over.
-
How do some honey bees stop a hornet?
How do Asian honey bees defend themselves from giant hornets?
What defense has Apis cerana evolved against Vespa mandarinia?
- They make it too hot
- They hide underwater
- They change color
Show the answer
They make it too hot
They huddle around it and make it too warm.
Many bees ball around the hornet and heat it to about 46 °C.
Heat balling: workers raise the ball's temperature to about 46 °C, lethal to the hornet but not to the bees.
-
What is this hornet's name now?
What name did US insect scientists choose for Vespa mandarinia in 2022?
Which common name did the Entomological Society of America adopt in 2022?
- Northern giant hornet
- Tiny garden hornet
- Desert hornet
Show the answer
Northern giant hornet
Northern giant hornet!
Northern giant hornet, because it lives farther north than the southern giant hornet.
Northern giant hornet, in place of the popular name Asian giant hornet; Vespa soror became the southern giant hornet.
Places where you might see it
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Watch
Country
Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Most of its land is steep mountains and forest, Mount Fuji is its tallest peak, and about 124 million people live there, many of them in big cities such as Tokyo.
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Watch
Country
South Korea
South Korea occupies the southern part of the Korean Peninsula in East Asia, with sea on three sides. It is mostly mountains and hills, its capital Seoul is one of its many big cities, and the national census counted about 51.8 million people in 2025.
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Watch
Country
China
China is the largest country in Asia, almost as big as all of Europe. The land steps down from the high, cold Plateau of Tibet in the west to plains and coasts in the east, and about 1.4 billion people live there, along with giant pandas in the mountains of south-central China.
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The western honey bee lives in big families called colonies, with one queen and many workers. Workers collect nectar and pollen from flowers, turn nectar into honey, and tell each other where food is by dancing. As they travel, they pollinate many plants, including crops people eat.
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European mantis
The European mantis is the best-known praying mantis. It sits very still with its spiky front legs folded, then snatches insects that come close. It is native to Europe, Africa and much of Asia, and people brought it to North America more than 100 years ago.
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European stag beetle
The European stag beetle is one of Europe's biggest beetles. Males have giant jaws shaped like a stag's antlers, which they use to wrestle other males. Stag beetles spend most of their lives underground as larvae, eating rotting wood for about four years, and live only a few weeks as adults.
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Watch
Country
Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Most of its land is steep mountains and forest, Mount Fuji is its tallest peak, and about 124 million people live there, many of them in big cities such as Tokyo.
-
Watch
Country
South Korea
South Korea occupies the southern part of the Korean Peninsula in East Asia, with sea on three sides. It is mostly mountains and hills, its capital Seoul is one of its many big cities, and the national census counted about 51.8 million people in 2025.
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Watch
Country
China
China is the largest country in Asia, almost as big as all of Europe. The land steps down from the high, cold Plateau of Tibet in the west to plains and coasts in the east, and about 1.4 billion people live there, along with giant pandas in the mountains of south-central China.
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Animal
Common wasp
The common wasp is a black and yellow striped insect that lives in a big family called a colony. Thousands of wasps share a round nest made of paper that they make by chewing wood. They catch insects such as caterpillars and flies to feed their young, which makes them useful garden helpers.
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The American lobster is a big crustacean that lives on the rocky sea floor of the northwest Atlantic Ocean. It has two very different claws, one for crushing and one for tearing, and it must climb out of its hard shell again and again to grow.
For parents & teachers
What children will learn
- Describe how a hornet colony is founded and grows over one year.
- Explain how Asian honey bees defend themselves and why European honey bees cannot.
- Explain what an invasive species is and how communities helped eradicate one.
- Discuss why scientists choose careful, accurate common names.
Recommended ages: 3 to 17 · About 15 minutes
Talk about it
- Why might a hornet that is normal in Asia be a problem in North America?
- How did ordinary people help scientists find the hornets in Washington?
- Why do you think scientists wanted a calmer, more accurate name for this hornet?
Try at home or in class
- Measure 5 centimeters on a ruler and compare it with your thumb and with a coin.
- Make a simple timeline of a hornet colony's year with four seasons and draw what happens in each.
Key vocabulary: colony, queen, invasive species, eradicate, ocelli, larva
Where these facts come from
- GBIF Backbone Taxonomy and GBIF Occurrence Search , Global Biodiversity Information Facility (CC0 1.0 (backbone); occurrence counts are facts derived from records under CC0, CC BY and CC BY-NC)
- Wikidata , Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)
- Northern Giant Hornet, Vespa mandarinia Smith (1852) (EENY-754) , University of Florida, IFAS Extension (Featured Creatures)
- Northern Giant Hornet (pest alert) , North Central Integrated Pest Management Center
- Northern giant hornet , Washington State Department of Agriculture
- Northern giant hornet eradication , Washington Invasive Species Council
- 'Murder hornets' have a new common name: northern giant hornet , Science News
- ‘Northern Giant Hornet’ Adopted as Common Name for Vespa mandarinia , Entomological Society of America
- Wikimedia Commons , Wikimedia Foundation (Per file: Public domain, CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA only (credited on each page))
Checked, not yet human-reviewed. Last updated October 27, 2026. Spotted a mistake? Tell us.