Asian hornet team ready to repel insect invaders again

Guernsey’s vigilance and distance from France has helped keep the issue under control, with no secondary nests found last year.

But Asian hornet strategy project co-ordinator Francis Russell said it was important not to get complacent.

Spring queening traps are being prepared, which will help attract and capture queen Asian hornets before they make new nests.

‘Over the next few weeks we will be calling up our volunteers to look after the 270 traps,’ he said.

They should be out by early April and islanders will also then be asked to keep an eye on hornets flying into properties or outbuildings and report any suspicious sightings.

‘If there are any nests we missed last year, we expect those queens to be turning up,’ he said.

While no nests were found last year, there were six Asian hornet sightings, including a queen at Pembroke last autumn, which was never tracked down. If she survived the winter, she could be making a nest soon.

Asian hornets are an invasive species that target other pollinating insects, such as honey bees, and can devastate insect numbers. In France, the problem has been increasing and the insects have been spreading up into Germany.

While an Asian hornet queen was spotted in St Helier at the end of February, Mr Russell said it was still quite cold for the insects, which ideally need the temperature at about 13C.

It has been a bad winter for hornets and bees, with warmer winter weather likely to draw out insects too early and weaken them, and wet weather more likely to encourage fungal growth.

Mr Russell said Asian hornets were also more likely than bees to shelter in leaf litter for the winter, so would be more vulnerable than bees to very wet conditions.

‘That’s why they have 300 to 400 queens per nest,’ Mr Russell said.

‘So even if they have a bad winter, there only needs to be one to start up again.’

In 2019, there were eight nests found in the island, but none last year.

‘The figures are promising,’ Mr Russell said.

If there are no nests in Guernsey, then the insects can still fly here from the Continent, especially if there is a wind from the east.

Mr Russell said they kept an eye on the weather conditions to determine where queens might be coming over.

Alderney, which is only 10 miles from France, is more vulnerable than Guernsey to invasion.

Mr Russell said the team was working closely with all islands of the Bailiwick to tackle this problem.

At the end of this year the project will be coming up for its three-year review.

Mr Russell said the problem was not going to go away because the hornets could not be eradicated, so it was important to manage the problem.