The Asian Hornet is a highly aggressive, non-native, invasive insect predator of all native pollinators, that poses a significant threat to all wild and managed pollinators in Europe.
Defra is encouraging all gardeners to help by placing bait stations somewhere in their garden which can be monitored regularly by you, the gardener. These bait stations are simple dishes of attractant which DO NOT kill the Asian hornet, nor any other insect which may be attracted. We are encouraged to learn how to correctly identify a live Asian hornet, which will return at intervals to your bait station. Once notified, Defra officers will attend within hours and will be able to track, find and destroy an Asian hornet nest within a few more hours.
Tips on how to make a simple bait station: Use any shallow wide dish, such as a plastic tupperware dish with sides at least 4cm deep. Place either apple juice concentrate or Suterra or Trappit in the dish, and keep constantly half full, and make sure to place a large stone in the tub to enable ALL insects to escape. The crucial point is that this is not intended to kill, but to find a LIVE Asian hornet and enable location of its nest.
Asian hornets will also be attracted to flowering ivy, Hedera helix; not for the flowers, but for the huge range of insect pollinators to be found foraging on the ivy nectar and pollen between September and December, details here Hedera helix. The Asian hornet will hawk these areas, hover, and catch pollinators, pulling off their legs and heads and flying back to their nests with the protein-rich thoraxes of pollinators, to feed to their developing larvae.
It is only after Asian hornets have exhausted the supply of easy-catch pollinators, that they will hawk and destroy honeybee hives (a process which takes one colony of Asian hornets approximately 5 minutes to devour a hive of up to thousands of honeybees, including the brood). Our native honeybees have no ability to detect Asian hornet pheromones, nor associate it with danger, and also have not evolved any defence strategies, which Asian pollinators have (for example by heating the hawking hornets), scenarios can be viewed on YouTube.
Please help DEFRA halt it’s progress by downloading the Asian Hornet App to your smartphone:
Android:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.ac.ceh.hornets&hl=en_GB
Apple iPhone:
https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/asian-hornet-watch/id1161238813
UK Government Information on the App
Further information on the app from the UK Government here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-app-to-report-asian-hornet-sightings