A major threat to Guam’s honeybee population has prompted cooperation from state partners. In August, hornet-hunting experts from the Washington State Department of Agriculture will be arriving on island to train local officials to track and eradicate the greater banded hornets, using the latest technology.

"The whole goal is to tag it onto the underside," said Christopher Rosario, Guam's state entomologist. State partners are planning a sting operation using tiny radio transmitters to save Guam’s pollinators. The threat: greater banded hornets, an invasive pest that have made Guam home since they were first spotted nearly a decade ago.

The local agency is teaming-up with seasoned experts from Washington State. That same team successfully tracked and eliminated so-called "murder hornets” in three years.

"Washington State gave us this voucher specimen about five years ago. Now they’re going to come out and help us, using the same methods they used when they eradicated the northern giant hornet in Washington State," he explained.

Inside the Guam Department of Agriculture’s Biosecurity Lab in Tiyan, Rosario provided a demonstration, saying, "How the heck are we going to tag a hornet that is alive?" one method is to stick the live hornet into a vial and put it in a freezer to ‘knock it out', of which Rosario said, "Throw it into a cooler of ice, wait about two minutes, take it back out and it should be laying down like this but sleeping."

Once the transmitter is glued on, they’ll use towers to track its every move. "Like before a hornet grabs a bee, where does it go? Does it fly straight back to its nest or does it go to a tree and start mauling on a bee? These are some questions we wanted answered a long time ago when the attacks first came out," he said.

And then hunt them back to their nest for research and ultimately, eradication. But safety first. Agriculture’s biosecurity field technician Ryan Cepeda got suited-up in a new hornet suit, and Rosario said, "These suits are going to allow us to extract a hornet’s nest during the day."

The hornet stings longer and stronger than a honeybee and can pierce through a regular beesuit. "They’re going to keep stinging you until they feel like you’ve had enough," Cepeda explained. "And if someone is allergic to stings, that can be very fatal." He said he's been stung by a hornet in the past, describing the pain as sheer agony.

"The first time I got stung, it was kind of shocking. It was on my back and it kept stinging me for like about two minutes," he recalled.

The state partners will be on Guam to train local officials for about three weeks in August. In meantime, Rosario says with the rainy weather, the community could be seeing more hornets as they take cover in dry places, like inside homes and garages.

"If you see a hornet in your yard, report it and we will send out our Washington State team as well as us to see if we can track it back to its nest," he said.