The yellow-legged hornet is back in Georgia, and the state’s Agriculture Commissioner has put five coastal counties on alert for the papery nests that can grow into 6,000-worker colonies by late summer. Tyler J Harper’s office renewed the call on June 10, asking residents in Bryan, Bulloch, Chatham, Effingham, and Liberty to report any embryo or primary nest they find.
The yellow-legged hornet is a known predator of honeybees, and the worry reaches from the apiary into Georgia’s farm economy. A single embryo nest left alone can grow into a secondary nest with thousands of hornets and multiple reproductive queens, according to the agriculture department. Public reporting has been the agency’s main line of defense since the insect was first detected in the United States in 2023.
Georgia Renews Its Call for Nest Sightings
The June 10 alert from the Georgia Department of Agriculture frames the call in plain terms. Harper said the agency has made significant progress in its effort to eradicate the yellow-legged hornet, but public reporting remains critical to that success. A single embryo or primary nest, the press release warns, can grow into a secondary nest holding thousands of hornets and multiple reproductive queens capable of establishing new colonies.
The five counties sit along Georgia’s coast, with Savannah’s port at the center of Chatham County. The yellow-legged hornet first turned up near that same port in 2023, when a beekeeper found an unusual-looking insect in an apiary and the University of Georgia confirmed the identification on August 9 of that year. The full text of Georgia’s June 10 nest alert is online, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service backed the call, making the 2023 detection the first detection of a live yellow-legged hornet in the United States. Since then, the state has run a tracking and trapping program aimed at keeping the species from gaining a foothold.
The June 10 alert is the second time this year the agency has reached out to the public. In March, CBS News reported, Harper named six counties for heightened watch: Bryan, Bulloch, Chatham, Effingham, Liberty, and Screven. The current list drops Screven but otherwise holds the same coastal focus. Officials did not, in the June 10 release, say why Screven was removed from the warning area.
As in previous years, we are asking for the public’s continued help. Early reporting of embryo and primary nests is critical. It allows us to stop queens before they spread and reduces potential damage to our state’s honeybee population. This is especially important for residents of Coastal Georgia.
Tyler J Harper, in a March 31, 2026 interview with CBS News.
Where the Hornets Have Shown Up
The yellow-legged hornet is native to the tropical and subtropical parts of Southeast Asia, according to CBS News. From there it has spread into parts of Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and reached Georgia through the port of Savannah in 2023, the first confirmed live detection in the United States. The original case file from that finding sits at the 2023 Savannah hornet detection page run by the state’s extension service. The founding queen likely arrived as a stowaway in cargo, the same path the insect has used in other invaded regions.
The bees at the center of the concern are European honeybees, the same managed and wild colonies that pollinate much of Georgia’s produce. Yellow-legged hornets do not eat bees. They hawk them, hovering in front of a hive entrance and picking off returning foragers midair to feed their own larvae. A sustained attack can collapse a hive in weeks, and the loss radiates outward into the crops and gardens that depend on those pollinators.
The agency’s June 10 guidance tells residents to watch for hawking activity around beehives, particularly during the morning hours, before noon, and after 5 p.m. That window matches the hornet’s hunting rhythm. Hawking shows up first at the hive entrance, where a hovering hornet grabs returning bees in the air to feed its own larvae. The morning and late-afternoon bands are diagnostic because honeybee flight is heaviest in those hours, and so is the hunting pressure that follows it. Hawking rarely lasts more than a few minutes per pass, but it is the most reliable early sign that a nest is in the area.
- July 2023: A beekeeper reports an unusual-looking hornet in an apiary near the port of Savannah.
- August 9, 2023: The University of Georgia confirms the identification; USDA APHIS backs the call, marking the first confirmed live detection of a yellow-legged hornet in the United States.
- March 31, 2026: Harper names six counties for heightened vigilance in an interview with CBS News.
- June 10, 2026: The Georgia Department of Agriculture renews the public call, focusing on five coastal counties and asking residents to report embryo and primary nests.
From Embryo Nest to 6,000 Workers
The yellow-legged hornet runs an annual cycle that starts with a single overwintered queen. From December to March, those queens stay in a dormant state, and they emerge in spring to build a small embryo nest roughly the size of a tennis ball, the state’s information page explains. That first nest is the foundation: the queen lays the eggs that will become the colony’s workers. By April to June, the embryo nest has grown into a primary nest, ranging from a softball to a watermelon in size with a shell-like exterior, hanging from a tree or fixed to a wall. The state’s June 10 release lists trees, shrubs, eaves, and other elevated locations around homes, businesses, and wooded areas as the most common places to find these early nests.
Between June and September, the worker hornets expand the colony into a secondary nest, often high in a tree and sometimes exceeding the size of a basketball. A mature secondary nest can hold up to 6,000 hornets, the figure the state keeps repeating in its alerts. The GDA has made removal of the early-stage nest the priority, ahead of any later trapping, because the secondary nest is what produces next year’s reproductive queens. The April to June window for primary nests is the cheapest intervention point, and the only stage of the year when a homeowner has a realistic chance of spotting the nest before it grows.
How a Bee Hunter Becomes a Farm Problem
The honeybee is the obvious casualty. The yellow-legged hornet is a known predator of European honeybees, and the GDA’s June 10 release calls the threat significant. But the bees are not the only thing at risk, and the agency is not framing the campaign around them. The commissioner, in the same release, names Georgia’s number one industry, agriculture, as the downstream asset the nest-reporting effort is meant to protect.
Georgia’s agriculture depends on pollination. The state’s fruit, vegetable, and seed crops all lean on managed and wild bees for the yield that turns a flower into a harvest. A meaningful loss of pollinators does not just lower a honey crop; it lowers the productivity of the entire field around it. A bee shortage shows up first in the food that does not form, not in the bees that are missing.
The June 10 release says the hornet poses a significant threat to honeybees and other pollinators that support Georgia’s agricultural industry. That framing puts a pollinator in the role of a worker bee for the state’s largest economic sector, with the hornet as the bottleneck. The GDA’s tracking and trapping program is the agency’s response to that bottleneck.
The 2023 detection set off a three-year campaign that has, by the agency’s own June 10 account, made significant progress against the species. The GDA’s June 10 message, that every embryo or primary nest reported and removed today helps prevent larger infestations tomorrow, makes public input the agency’s main lever. Without that inflow of tips, the program cannot act on nests the agency has not been told about. The state’s plan is to find embryo nests before they become the secondary nests that produce next year’s queens. Public reporting is the only part of the program that runs without a state trapper in the field.
Spotting the Nest and Sending the Report
The signature of an early yellow-legged hornet nest is its shape. The structures are paper, built by chewing plant fiber into a pulp, and they are egg-shaped rather than the football-shaped paper nests associated with native paper wasps. They hang in trees, attach to shrubs, or fix to the eaves of a building, most often above head height. A primary nest in April or May is roughly the size of a softball; by June it can approach a watermelon.
The agency has narrowed the search to a few common locations. The June 10 release lists trees, shrubs, eaves, and other elevated locations around homes, businesses, and wooded areas as the places to look first. Nests near a managed beehive are a particular concern, because the hawking behavior around the hive entrance is the cleanest field sign. Anywhere paper-pulp construction appears above ground and away from the more familiar umbrella-shaped wasp nest is worth a closer look.
Reporting is a single email. The GDA’s Plant Protection team takes tips at yellow.legged.hornet@agr.georgia.gov, and the agency asks residents to send a photo and the address or GPS coordinates of the suspected nest. The state runs the identification and handles any eradication, so residents are not asked to approach or disturb a nest on their own. More information on what a nest looks like, and on the GDA’s full eradication program, is on the agency’s state hornet information page.
- Look up, not down. Embryo and primary nests attach to trees, shrubs, and eaves, not to the ground.
- Watch for hawking around beehives, particularly before noon and after 5 p.m.
- Note the shape. A yellow-legged hornet nest is paper and egg-shaped, not the umbrella-shaped paper nest of native wasps.
- Email yellow.legged.hornet@agr.georgia.gov with a photo and a location. The GDA handles removal.
Three Years Into Georgia’s Eradication Campaign
The agency is framing its three-year campaign as a partial success. The June 10 release credits significant progress while warning that the work is not done. The campaign rests on two pillars: a state-run tracking and trapping program, and the public reporting of nests the agency cannot reach on its own. Of those two, the public-reporting pillar is the one the agency keeps coming back to in 2026, and the one the June 10 release leans on hardest.
The pest itself is still inside the state. CBS News reported on March 31 that the insect was first detected by a beekeeper in 2023, and the state’s tracking has held the known range to the coastal counties named in the alerts. The hornet’s biology is what makes the work hard: a single overwintered queen can start a new colony each spring, and a single missed embryo nest can produce the secondary nests that drive next year’s spread. The state’s strategy is to find embryo nests before they become the secondary nests that produce next year’s queens. The June 10 release makes the arithmetic explicit: report early, or pay for it later in the season.
