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Not a killer bee

A Burns Lake local sent in a photo of this fly he found outside his home in a bucket of water and feared it to be an Asian Giant Hornet. However, provincial apiculturist Paul van Westendorp confirmed that the fly was in fact an Elm SawFly, a fly very commonly found in timber-regions.
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A Burns Lake local sent in a photo of this fly he found outside his home in a bucket of water and feared it to be an Asian Giant Hornet. However, provincial apiculturist Paul van Westendorp confirmed that the fly was in fact an Elm SawFly, a fly very commonly found in timber-regions. A nest of the giant hornets was first found in Nanaimo in 2017 and was destroyed, reports of sightings of these hornets then emerged in 2019 and 2020 but van Westendorp said that Asian Giant Hornets weren’t yet reported in the Lakes District region. He also noted that the Elm Sawfly was harmless unlike the Asian Giant Hornets. (Submitted/Lakes District News)