From Newsweek
August 4, 2020
Asian giant hornets have the potential to spread across the United States and establish a permanent presence in the country, experts have told Newsweek.
The hornet species—the world’s largest—is native to eastern and southern portions of Asia, however, the insect was detected in British Columbia, Canada in September 2019, and subsequently, across the border in a single county of Washington state in December of that year.
“I suspect if they are not stopped in Washington they will spread across the more temperate regions of the United States—basically, any place that approximates where they are already established, and, as they are closely related to our paper wasps, probably where those are established too,” Marc Lame, clinical associate professor at Indiana University’s O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, told Newsweek.