Hornets

The Hornets are here! Maybe

Its been a week for hornets.
Asian hornets, although not a threat to us, are a real risk to honey bees and they have the endearing habit of decapitating honey bees and feeding the carcass to their young. They can easily destroy an entire honey bee colony.

They have spread across Europe and have reached France and obviously the worry is they will get to the UK.
They are already in Jersey and this appeared recently.

A secondary nest is significantly more worrying as it contains a large number of queens and its the first time this type of nest has been found.

There have been two occasions in the last couple of years where the Asian Hornet has been discovered in the UK. On both occasions it seems to be dealt with.

SomersetLive recently printed an article about another possible Asian hornet sighting.

For the two previous sightings there was an immediate notice sent out by the National Bee Unit to all its subscribing beekeepers and other bee organisations issued press releases, but this time nothing.
As I went through the article it said the 'unconfirmed report' was

issued by a city-based barrister.

This gave the report more credence as its well known city based barristers are far more knowledgeable about hornets than say, country-based barristers.
Later in the article it stated it

was reported by barrister Matthew Scott on Twitter.

A barrister on Twitter.
Coincidentally this occupation was recently voted joint top of a poll of People You Trust Least' along with journalists, politicians and scientists.

Incidentally I  have heard of an unsubstantiated report of Elvis Presley riding a flying unicorn around the Houses of Parliament but its not on Facebook or Twitter so I don't think I believe it.

Although this report is unsubstantiated, there is a substantiated report of a European hornet nest at the bottom of my garden.
Last year I collected a bird box from a local school that the teachers thought had honey bees in it.
It actually had bumblebees but I took it away and put it at the end of my garden where they enjoyed the Summer and I enjoyed having them around.
A few days ago I thought I saw a hornet and tonight I saw one fly into the bird box.
I got the camcorder out and took a few clips.

For those of you who aren't city-based barristers with a Twitter account, the picture below shows the difference between Asian and European hornets.

This is what the RSPB say about European hornets

The hornet's life cycle is similar to that of the common wasp. Newly-mated queens hibernate during the winter, and emerge in spring to begin building a nest. They lay eggs that hatch into sterile female workers who take over nest building and collecting food for the developing larvae. Later in the summer males and fertile females hatch. These mate and the females become next year’s queens. The males, old queen and workers die in the autumn.
Hornets have an unwarranted fearsome reputation, but will only sting humans if attacked.

They are quite impressive and I think I will just leave them alone.