As if a pandemic wasn’t apocalyptic enough, recent headlines about a  “murder hornet” landing in the U.S. have stirred up a nationwide panic on social media, including, apparently, in the D.C. region.

The Maryland Agriculture Department tweeted a statement on Monday reassuring residents that it was “highly unlikely” that the insect, also known as the Asian giant hornet, was in Maryland, after receiving several phone calls.

“We’re getting calls mostly from concerned citizens who think they’ve seen one or want to know if it’s here,” says the department’s communications director Jason Schellhardt. “The short answer is it’s very highly unlikely it’s here. We have no reports of it.”

The so-called murder hornets were first spotted in Washington state last December, and could now potentially pose threats to bee hives, likely after emerging from a winter’s hibernation, according to the New York Times. The world’s largest hornet, with queens up to two inches long, the killer bugs can wipe out entire hives of honey bees in a matter of hours, and their curved stingers can inflict venom that is potentially lethal to humans, even through a beekeeper suit. Originating in Japan, the hornets are responsible for 50 deaths annually there, per the Times.

With local residents already on edge, news of the murder hornet felt like the universe kicking us all while we’re down. But according to a local bee expert, the region need not worry about this new supposed threat. Toni Burnham, the president of the D.C. Bee Keepers Alliance, says that, actually, “everyone should chill the hell out.”

A big reason for people’s alarm about the insect is its nickname, she says, which is misleading. “There is no more a murder hornet than there is a killer bee. They’re both stupid names,” says Burnham. That fear has consequences—in the past few days, she has seen photos across the country showing some people killing other bees, even bumblebees, over the murder hornet paranoia.

The hornet is not new to entomologists. Like most insects, when unprovoked, they’re not a threat to humans, Burnham says. “These things have been around, and there are techniques for controlling them,” says Burnham. (Some honeybees have developed a particularly novel way of fighting the hornets—they literally cook them.)

Burnham says that the murder hornets are no scarier looking than other large insects that buzz around the region, like the European hornet (which she calls flying school buses for their bright yellow torsos) or her favorite bug, cicada killers. She urges that residents shouldn’t go out of their way to kill these creatures out of fear of a potential murder hornet invasion.

This is not the first time that headlines have prompted a flurry of concerned callers to flood local government agencies phone lines.

When President Donald Trump suggested at a White House coronavirus briefing that potentially injecting ingesting toxic cleaners like bleach could cleanse coronavirus inside of the body, Maryland’s Emergency Management Agency received over 100 calls in the course of one morning about the dangerous idea. The agency had to tweet out a clarifying statement, that, under no circumstances, should someone put a disinfectant into their bodies.

While the murder hornet concerns may be less irrational than calls over putting toxic chemicals into a human body, Burnham says bee experts and entomologists in Washington are on the case, and that there’s no reason for those in the region to worry.

“Let [Washington state] handle it, and everyone calm down,” Burnham says. “Have a beer.”