Asian hornet controls appear to have paid off this year

The team behind the strategy has released its annual report which shows a steady decrease since 2018 in both confirmed sightings and detected nests.

They say this ‘provides good evidence that our efforts to control hornet populations are paying off’.

Possible sightings reported by the public fell from 302 to 191, confirmed sightings from 70 to six and detected nests from eight to zero.

The first record of the year was a queen found on 14 April in St Peter Port, followed by others in the Vale, St Sampson’s, Castel and a late one that turned up in St Saviour’s on 3 June.

For the second year running spring queening was run from April to June.

‘This is a strategic programme which aims to trap queen hornets either emerging from hibernation or flying in from France. The island-wide trapping was coordinated across the Bailiwick, with 270 traps on Guernsey alone, and all monitored by volunteers,’ a spokesman said.

‘The Track Don’t Trample phase of the strategy then took over for the remainder of the year whereby worker hornets are tracked to the location of their large main nest.

‘No hornets were detected during the summer and 18 weeks elapsed before the final record of the year was confirmed on 5 October, when a suspected queen appeared at Pembroke, presumed to be newly-arrived from France.’

This year the Asian hornet team also trialled a new approach to tracking worker hornets using sugary bait stations evenly spaced across the island and based on the usual foraging distances they will travel from the nest in search of food.

‘These bait stations were monitored daily by volunteers but no hornets were reported to have visited them. This, together with the fewer number of confirmed sightings, provides good evidence that the team’s (and the public’s) efforts to control Asian hornet populations in the Bailiwick are paying off.’

Any still remaining are hibernating.

Asian hornets first arrived in Guernsey in 2017. A large nest can hold as many as 5,000 and they are seen as a threat to biodiversity as they prey on native insects such as bees.

What is happening in Europe?

Asian hornets are spreading out across the Continent and becoming established in new areas at an estimated rate of 78km/year. Earlier this year, three nests were reported from Hamburg, Northern Germany. These hornets were shown to be related to French populations, and yet the nearest known European Asian hornets were 350km away. They were most likely transported inside vehicles/freight containers.

The migration of Asian hornets into the Channel Islands is believed to be a regular occurrence each spring (and possibly autumn), with the natural dispersal of fertile queens, flying over from France.

Guernsey is 27miles/43km from the French coast, only a couple of hours away as the hornet flies.