Experts are warning that murder hornets could be making a comeback in the US come the spring as queen bees emerge from underground following the winter months.

"Only the queens survive the winter, and right now, any [hornet] hibernating won't come out until it's warm enough to do so, in mid-to-late April," Doug Yanega, a scientist at the Entomology Research Museum in California who has studied murder hornets, told the New York Post.