Anyone who enjoys the great outdoors or honey on their cornflakes or in their tea or sandwiches, whatever their passion for reaping every delightful moment enjoying the open countryside, everyone can help with protecting our UK bee and insect population defeat the onslaught of an invasive and deadly predator, the yellow-legged Vespa Velutina, the species otherwise known as the Asian Hornet.
This parasite is posing a real risk to our native bees and insects who glorify our countryside and who help pollinate an abundance of flora and fauna that enriches our farm lands to our national parks, gardens and greenhouses, feeding the nation and feasting our eyes with every little flower that brightens our day. Please help save the bees!
If you can help please read the National Bee Unit's 'Yellow-Legged Asian Hornet Monitoring' document for further information about how you can get involved. https://www.bbka.org.uk/Handlers/Download.ashx?IDMF=1b40f155-02a7-4bd5-aa20-f564791cc997
The biggest worry is that the very first sighting in 2024 was in early January and then again in early March. This raised concerns that Asian hornets have been able to successfully hibernate in the UK which is potentially disastrous for our native colonies of honey bees, food producers and bumble bees alike.
Let's make 2025 the year we halt the invasion!
If you spot a Yellow-Legged Asian Hornet or a nest please report it immediately.
Please report your sightings of the Asian Hornet via the apps
There is a very informative video uploaded to YouTube by the Angling Trust that gives some great help to identify the Asian Hornet, its likely habitat's building nests in tree's and differentiate the species from other native insect's, growing to approximately 25mm long, although similar in size to the European Hornet which is 25-30mm in length, the Asian Hornet being slightly shorter, in it's established adult form, it's much bigger than a Honey Bee and Wasp and it has distinctive markings including it's predominantly black body, a yellow band on it's forth segment of the abdomen, yellow legs and an orange head, please see the photo.
Believe me you don't want to be stung by the Asian Hornet, its much larger in size and quite distinctive from a Honey Bee, it is a ferociously dominating species, and a much more aggressive creature, especially towards our native Honey Bee, the importance to identify, eradicate and prevent the establishment of the Asian Hornet colonies in the UK cannot be stressed enough. So please everybody, report your sightings.
We have all heard how the Red Squirrel, over time was devastated here in the majority of the UK by its Grey Squirrel cousin, a predatory invader, thankfully the work of conservation groups who are helping to turn the tide and re-establish the Red Squirrel in small numbers in parts of the country and are doing great work, but the potential of the Asian Hornet's impact on our native honey bee population is just as severe, the threatened ecological destruction could have much wider implications for our unique ecosystem, our countryside and economy.
Please use the apps afore mentioned to report sightings of the Asian Hornet and keep this intruder off our native insect population.
Stay safe everyone, please don't attempt to remove these parasites yourselves, they can be dangerous to human's, simply report your sightings and let's enjoy our countryside and who know's we may even encourage a budding future Melittologists or Apiologists into a career to help save our native Bees.
For info, my two sister's keep Honey Bee's in two separate locations in the UK and have both identified the Asian Hornet's locally, and as a huge threat to our native Bee and insect population nationwide. Keeping our environment is in everybody's interest, you never know who you could be camping next to in the future!
“Only” South England, so far: official figures -
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/asian-hornet-uk-sightings/asian-hornet-sightings-recorded-since-2016
Interesting that in NZ, they don’t use insecticide to kill wasp bykes (nests?) that are causing s nuisance. They smother the byke with talc. That way, the wanted insects (like honey bees) are unharmed. For Asian hornets in UK, I wouldn’t be surprised if they used a flame thrower.
Yes they think they are mostly blown over the channel or hitch a ride on a ferry but there was a nest in Yarm (near Darlington) so not only down South. I had a couple of hives (North Yorkshire) at the time which is why I remembered the Yarm nest.
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Topic: Defeating the Asian Hornet in the U.K
via mobile 19/12/2024 at 9:44am
