Northern giant hornet
The northern giant hornet is the biggest hornet in the world. It has an orange head, a dark body and a striped yellow and black tail end. A queen can be longer than your thumb.
How big is it?
How long is it?
How wide are its wings?
How big is Northern giant hornet compared to YOU?
Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
It makes its nest under the ground, often in old tunnels dug by mice or near rotten pine roots.
When it turned up in North America in 2019, people sent in thousands of photos of other insects and even a plastic toy, thinking they had found one.
It has been around for millions of years. Its fossils have been found in old rocks in China.
Most asked questions about Northern giant hornet
?How big is the northern giant hornet?
Workers are about 35 to 40 millimetres long, and queens can be more than 50 millimetres.
?Where does the northern giant hornet live?
In forests and low mountains in East and South Asia. It was found in North America for a few years but was removed by 2024.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Vespa mandarinia
- Group
- Wasps and hornets
- Family
- Vespidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Vespidae
- Lives on
- Asia
- Also known as
- Asian giant hornet, Murder hornet
Where the facts come from
- Asian giant hornet (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Gary Alpert. CC BY 2.5, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
European hornet
Bald-faced hornet
Red velvet ant
Eastern cicada killer
Asian hornet
Great black wasp
Large pine weevil
Red-brown longhorn beetle
Jet ant
Fall cankerworm
Black arches
Peach blossom