What’s Bugging You? Vespa velutina!

I am a gardener who is partial to ornamental and native plants and passionately against invasive species. My husband is a beekeeper who manages 14 hives at two locations. We are each dedicated to our hobby through education and practice and we respect each other’s hobby. Bees and gardens, after all, play well together.

Our backyard bliss is about to be punctured though as we await the arrival of a bully bug. The yellow-legged hornet (Vespa velutina) is a voracious predator of honey bees as well as native bees and other insects. A member of the wasp family, it hovers outside honey bee hives capturing bees as they exit and enter the hives. It’s a honey bee buffet. Native to Asia, the yellow-legged hornet was first found in Georgia in 2023 and later in South Carolina. In July 2026 some visited a hummingbird feeder in Matthews, N.C. and an observant human reported the sighting to the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (NCAGR). So now gardeners and beekeepers throughout the region wait with heightened awareness for the arrival of this invasive, social species to their neighborhood.

Yellow coloring on the lower half of all four legs is an obvious way to differentiate this hornet from other insects. But you’ll need to get close as it is a pale yellow and the overall size of the insect is about an inch. Other identifying characteristics are a dark thorax (or ‘chest’) and an abdomen that is dark at the base (some thin yellow stripes) and grows paler towards the tip. A yellow-legged hornet’s paper nest is also unique. It is a muddy red color as opposed to the bald-faced hornet’s gray nest and many times larger. A typical bald-faced hornet nest is home to 100 to 400 workers while the yellow- legged hornet nest may have up to 6,000 workers.

So What?

There are more than 500 species of bees in N.C. At summer’s peak a single healthy medium-to-large honeybee hive may contain 60,000 to 80,000 or more bees. In Europe where the yellow-legged hornet has been active since 2004, honeybee colonies have suffered great loss.

Don Hopkins, a state apiarist in the Piedmont, said because yellow-legged hornets attack honey bees, they can cause reduced foraging and colony failure. “This would result in reduced honey and other honey bee products, reduced crop production due to decreased pollination by honey bees and native pollinators, making the hornet a serious threat to North Carolina’s beekeeping community.” 

Native and other bee species are in danger, too, and not only from being eaten. The presence of yellow-legged hornets is so intimidating that the bees do not leave their nests or hives resulting in nutritional deficits and reduced floral pollination. The loss of honey bee colonies may have a greater impact economically, while the threat to native and other bees is potentially environmentally significant. 

Save a Bee

There are native plant and pollinator gardeners who could probably care less about the plight of honeybees, as they view them as competitors to native bees and other pollinators. Now we have a predator that does not discriminate and so this is an opportunity for us to band together against a common enemy.

Here’s how to help:

1) BOLO Familiarize yourself with the identifying features of a yellow-legged hornet and be on the lookout for it. Here is a detailed graphic to aid identification:

https://www.ncagr.gov/plant-industry/pidncsuylhcomppage-0/open.

2) Make a trap. The folks at NCAGR have posted step-by-step instructions for a homemade trap. The yellow-legged hornet is most active between March and October. The trap may collect various types of wasps and hornets, but bees are not usually

attracted to it. Here’s the link: https://www.ncagr.gov/plant-industry/pidylhtrappingguide/open

3) Report a sighting. Contact the apiary inspector for the area in which you garden. Follow this link to view a map of the six areas and contact information for each inspector. https://www.ncagr.gov/divisions/plant-industry/plant-protection/plant-industry-apiary-field-services

State apiarists and Extension Services agents across the state are asking for help from the public. Trapping yellow-legged hornets and reporting a sighting may not diminish the hornet’s population immediately but it could help officials get ahead of an outbreak and squash it sooner rather than later. Let’s show up for the broader gardening community, especially the bees!

Resources and Additional Information

NCDA&CS Yellow-legged Hornet Information

Characteristics of Yellow-legged Hornet 

Comparison Identification Cards 

NC Cooperative Extension Side by Side Comparison

North American Hornet Screening Tool

Trapping Yellow-legged Hornet

Yellow-legged hornet look-alikes (scroll down the page to blue bars)