As if coronavirus was not bad enough, we now have to contend with the fact that Asian murder hornets have made their way to the United States for the first time. Now, experts are weighing in for the first time to reveal how they think these insects that kill 50 people per year in Japan got here.

CBS News reported that the murder hornets were recently spotted in the U.S. for the first time in Washington state, and experts have said that they will make it to the east coast in the coming weeks or months. Karla Salp, a spokesperson for the Washington State Department of Agriculture, said that while it is unclear exactly how they got to America, experts have a pretty good idea of how they did so.

“Normally, though, they are unwitting hitchhikers on something (like shipping containers) or someone,” she said.

Two murder hornets were first spotted in Washington in December, with one being dead and one being alive. Experts suspect that there are far more murder hornets out there in the U.S. at this point, so they have reached out to the public for help in finding them.

“During this trapping season and with the help of public education and encouragement to report suspected sightings, we hope to have a better idea of where they are as well as to eradicate them if we can,” Salp explained.

Experts say that timing is crucial because unless the murder hornets are eliminated in the next few years, it could spread all over North America and become permanently established here. Salp added that while murder hornets pose a far bigger threat to honeybees, whose colonies they decimate, than to humans, people still need to be careful not to be stung by them.

“In general, people do not need to worry,” she said. “As long as you don’t step in a nest or approach a beehive they have taken over, there is a fairly low risk that you will be stung. That being said, if you are stung, their venom is more toxic than that of local bees and wasps, and they have more of it.”

In the video below, you’ll see how being stung by a murder hornet affected a YouTube star who makes a living off being stung by various insects. After seeing what happened to him, you will definitely want to avoid murder hornets at all cost.