Jeanne Howell was raised to be a hornet collector. Her father, Tom Howell, started collecting hornets in Cottage Grove after reading a newspaper article in the 1980s about a pharmaceutical company looking to hire hornet vendors for immunotherapy treatments.
“My dad always thought outside of the box,” Howell said. “It was in 1980 he read an article, I believe it was in The Register-Guard, about a pharmaceutical company that manufactured immunotherapy serum and they needed collectors. He was like, ‘Oh, I like playing with yellowjackets anyway. I can do this.'”
Howell said she took over the family business, which operates annually from May to October, when her dad retired. She’s one of 22 vendors across the U.S. who specialize in collecting hornets through nonchemical methods. She supplies them to Jubilant HollisterStier Allergy, a pharmaceutical company, for research and venom extraction, which uses them to develop allergy treatments and other medical applications…