HONOLULU The season's first large shipment of Christmas trees from the mainland came decorated with yellow jackets. Four refrigerated containers from the Pacific Northwest each holding about 300 Christmas trees were found on Saturday to be infested with the predatory wasps and were quarantined, according to Janelle Saneishi, spokeswoman for Hawaii's Department of Agriculture.
About 50 containers were examined during the weekend, and inspectors were going through an additional 50 on Monday, Saneishi said. The inspections are part of a statewide effort to keep invasive plants, insects and animals out of Hawaii's fragile ecosystem, which has more endangered species than anyplace in the USA, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The vast majority of the state's trees are shipped in from the mainland, according to Richard Tajiri, who has been importing trees for 30 years through his company, Christmas Hawaii.
Kim Canamore of Canamore Tree Farm in Oregon City, Ore., said Hawaii agriculture inspectors visited farms such as hers this year to try to cut down on problems.
Bees and wasps, such as the ones discovered frozen among the latest shipment of Christmas trees, are not native to Hawaii, said Andrew Taylor, an associate zoology professor at the University of Hawaii. One species of yellow jacket, Vespula pensylvanica, originally came to Hawaii on a Christmas tree shipment years ago and has become a threat to native plants and birds, Taylor said.
Even though the wasps become frozen in the refrigerated containers, Taylor said, they "reanimate" once they thaw out in Hawaii's warm climate. "Now they're here and they're a very effective predator," Taylor said. "They could affect pollination of our native endangered plants. And the insects they eat are the same ones that our native birds eat."
Efforts to keep the business homegrown have been largely unsuccessful. Aaron O'Brien, who was born on the island of Lanai, has been trying to sell two varieties of trees that can grow in Hawaii's climate for the past three years. He said he has not yet made a profit. O'Brien's Helemano Farms on Oahu grows Leland cypress and Norfolk Island pine trees. "Nobles and Douglas firs, you need a cold-weather freeze to grow those," O'Brien said.
Matson Navigation Co., Hawaii's primary ocean carrier, brings in roughly 150,000 trees each year, company spokesman Jeff Hull said. The bulk of this year's Hawaii's Christmas trees are scheduled to arrive Saturday, Hull said. 
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