"Could Cross the Threshold of the Other World"... The Struggle of Hornet Hunters Pouring Out 600 Hornets Through a Ceiling

From summer to autumn, there is an uninvited guest that turns a peaceful daily life into terror in an instant. It is the hornet. The unpleasant sound of wings flapping from a house ceiling or a massive nest occupying a village path threatens the daily lives of residents. According to an EBS documentary video, during this period when hornet attacks begin, there are 'hornet hunters' who travel across the country and fight a desperate battle to eliminate this threat.

A massive nest hidden in the ceiling, a precision operation involving endoscopes

A house in Sangju, Gyeongsangbuk-do. Hunters were dispatched after receiving an urgent report that hornets were coming out of the ceiling inside the house. At first, they thought there were only a few bees, but while the house was empty, the number of bees increased rapidly. The workers even deployed an endoscope to find the exact location of the nest. Through the endoscope, a nest with countless hornets tangled together was revealed inside the ceiling.

The Asian giant hornet tends to like dark and enclosed spaces, so it frequently appears in buildings and houses. The workers first carry out 'barrier' work to completely block the entrance and the passage used to enter and exit the nest. This is to fundamentally prevent bees from entering again next year or the year after. Afterward, they begin the full-scale removal process by drilling a hole in the ceiling. All work is carried out in teams of two, where one person catches the angry hornets while the other simultaneously performs the task of pulling the nest out from the ceiling. This is because if the nest is not properly removed, the bees may enter again even after the work is finished. Captured hornets are immediately disposed of on the spot by spraying insecticide.

The size of the nest revealed through the ceiling was as large as two human heads. The workers collected the nest, drenched in sweat. After the work, the torn ceiling is neatly finished by reinforcing it with wood. The worker goes through meticulous processes, such as cutting wooden boards to match the size of the finishing material so that the ceiling can always be finished from above.

"600 bees poured out"... The counterattack of the giant hornet and the intense scene

From August, the season for hornet eradication, they travel across the country, moving between 300km and 800km per day. Recently, they were urgently deployed to a village in Pohang to remove giant hornets that were obstructing the passage of residents. This location is on the way to the waste separation area, so residents were exposed to the threat of giant hornets, and the situation became so dangerous that they eventually could not walk the path properly.

The workers first attempted to catch the aggressive hornets using makeshift capture nets made on the spot by cutting the top and bottom of plastic bottles. However, when they removed the board covering the nest, an unexpected emergency occurred due to the giant hornets springing out fiercely. In a situation enough to fluster even a veteran hunter with decades of experience, the workers resisted by swinging insect nets as the angry swarm of hornets rushed in.

In the video, a warning is given regarding the danger of the giant hornet, stating, "You could cross the threshold of the other world." After a 30-minute struggle, the discovered nest was a massive scale, currently stacked about 5 layers high, and the video also shows pieces of the nest flying around. The number of hornets captured at the scene reached about 600. The workers continued their work by immediately putting the caught bees into alcohol to knock them unconscious.

A threat grown by climate change, the war against the yellow-legged hornet

The war against the 'yellow-legged hornet,' which is fatal to honeybee farms, also continues. The yellow-legged hornet, an invasive species that uses honeybees as prey, is causing increasing damage as its activity period lengthens due to the aftermath of climate change. A difficulty is that they mainly build nests at the tops of trees, so there is a scarcity of professional personnel who can eradicate them.

To find the nest of a yellow-legged hornet, they first use a strategy of capturing one bee alive, marking it so it can be distinguished from other bees, and then letting it fly away. In the video, a worker is shown saying to the captured bee, "Now, fly away. Fly over there," as they track the path the bee takes back to its nest to identify its location.

Inside the protective suit, it is as hot as a steamer even if a fan is turned on, and the tension is so high that the worker says, "If I get stung about five times, I don't know what might happen." The work cost is around 300,000 won for oxygen-related tasks, and for residential work including ceiling drilling, it is around the 500,000 won level. Although the daily wage they take home is not abundant, the hunters move to the next site today for those who lose sleep due to the threat of hornets.