Asian Hornet

The Asian Hornet is the insect world’s top predator.  It is beginning to establish itself in Kent and elsewhere in UK, mainly in the south.  Since arriving in Europe in 2004 it has spread quickly in all directions, causing major environmental damage and some fatalities, decimating honey bee colonies.  Its impact on the insect food chain is huge – honey bees are only a part.  Consequently, it impacts the whole of the environment and agriculture, and ultimately our economy and society.  Asian Hornets will affect us all in some way.

You can get involved by simply creating your own jam-jar bait trap, or by donating your jam jars to SDBKA! Perhaps you could make bait traps for other people to use?

SDBKA really need our help with the following roles:

• Track and Trace.  This involves tagging hornets to see where they go so we can find their nests.
•  The NBU may task our AHT to send a registered and trained verifier to confirm a sighting or a nest that has been reported really does involve Asian Hornets.
•  These volunteers maintain our Trapping Plan, deploy the traps, monitor them and ensure they are operating correctly, whether this is for queens in the spring or workers in the summer and early autumn.  They also catch and kill Asian Hornets.   In due course, a couple of our members may also be licensed to release trapped Asian Hornets, specifically to help locate a nest.
• Community support.  These SDBKA members support local communities with expert beekeeping and, where they can, hornet advice and information.

TO OFFER YOUR HELP email aht-coordinator@sdbka.org

If you don’t know much about the Asian Hornet and the threat it poses to our honey-bees, our food chain and to humans, you can watch this video here; as a brief introduction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1mLgrvoHzA

You can also  visit the SDBKA website for a wealth of easy-to-digest information here https://www.sdbka.org/asian-hornet

Documents below include nest identification, posters and identification information.