Sugary treats trialled to track Asian hornets
A NEW approach to following Asian hornets to find undetected nests has been adopted involving the systematic use of island-wide tracking stations.
It is now more than 10 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 10 last year, experts stress there is no room for complacency.
They say also 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.
The Asian hornet team, at the States' Agriculture, Countryside and Land Management Services, is therefore taking a more proactive approach and 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 1.5km 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.
Some 30 of these bait stations have been placed in the gardens of a network of trained volunteers, spaced out at one every two kilometres across the whole island, They will maintain the bait station regularly and monitor which insects are visiting it.
Francis Russell, project co-ordinator 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.’
n 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, visit https://www.gov.gg/asianhornet.
