Monday 17 August 2020
The Asian Hornet Team have adopted a new approach to tracking Asian hornets in an effort to find any nests which might be going undetected this summer. This involves the systematic use of island-wide tracking stations.
It is now more than ten weeks since the last confirmed sighting of an Asian hornet on Guernsey. Although fewer queen hornets were captured this spring, with only three compared to ten last year, there is no room for complacency.
From past experience, the Asian Hornet Team know an absence of sightings does not necessarily mean there are no hornets on the island. In 2019 a nest in a garden near Havelet remained undetected for the duration of the summer and was only detected and subsequently removed at the end of October. If hornets can pass 'under the radar' for so long in a heavily populated part of the island such as Havelet, there is every chance that there are currently nests going undetected across the island this summer.
These nests will be steadily expanding during this period of clement weather and each nest and can hold up to 5,000 hornets. If left uncontrolled Asian hornets will present an increased risk to the public as well as causing significant harm to our native insect populations, such as bees, as they are voracious predators.
For this reason, this year the Asian Hornet Team have taken a more proactive approach and are trialling a new technique to entice the worker hornets to specially devised tracking stations. These stations are comprised of a glass jar filled with a sugary bait which is slowly released into the air from a fabric wick.
Worker hornets are known to forage up to one and a half kilometres from their nest. Once they find this easy source of food, those hornets will continually feed at this station and can then be tracked to locate the nest.
30 of these bait stations have been placed in the gardens of our network of trained volunteers, spaced out at one every two kilometres across the whole island, who will then regularly maintain the bait station and monitor which insects are visiting it.
Francis Russell, Project Coordinator of the Asian Hornet Strategy, said:
"Even though things appear to be quiet on the Asian hornet front, we must always assume that there will be hornets nesting on the island somewhere that we don't yet know about.
If it wasn't for an observant member of the public, we could so easily have missed the nest in town last autumn. It only takes one missed nest in the autumn for the populations to rapidly increase the year after.
We are therefore trialling this approach to tracking and continue to encourage members of the public to stay vigilant and report any sightings to the Asian Hornet Team."
If you think you have spotted an Asian hornet, try to take a photograph and observe which direction it flies. Please do not kill it during the 'Track don't Trample' phase of the Strategy (June - October). Email your sighting details and photo to asianhornet@gov.gg or call 07839 197082. The Asian Hornet Team can then use these records to track the worker hornets back to the nest.
These nests may be sited anywhere from tall trees to lower down in hedges or brambles so the advice to all gardeners and contractors is to check carefully for signs of activity before you cut back hedges or vegetation.
For useful identification guides and more information about Asian hornets and the Strategy, please visit https://gov.gg/asianhornet.
