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A sugary bait will be used to tempt Asian hornets into tracking stations around the island, as the team responsible for managing the spread of the invasive species reveals a more "proactive" approach.
The Asian Hornet Team have adopted a new approach to tracking Asian hornets in an effort to find any nests which may have gone undetected throughout the summer.
The island-wide tracking stations are a new technique to entice worker hornets, which are known to forage up to one and a half kilometres from their nest. Once they find this easy source of food, it is hoped those hornets will continually feed at this station and can then be tracked to locate the nest.
These stations are comprised of a glass jar filled with a sugary bait which is slowly released into the air from a fabric wick.
Pictured: 30 bait stations have been placed in the gardens of trained volunteers, spaced out at one every two kilometres across the whole island.
Francis Russell, Project Coordinator of the Asian Hornet Strategy, said that while only three queens have been captured this year, compared to 10 in 2019, there is no room for complacency.
Last year, a nest in a garden near Havelet remained undetected all summer and was only detected and subsequently removed at the end of October. If hornets can pass ‘under the radar’ for so long in a heavily populated part of the island, Mr Francis said there is every chance that there are currently nests that are yet to be discovered.
“Even though things appear to be quiet on the Asian hornet front, we must always assume that there will be hornets nesting on the island somewhere that we don’t yet know about," he said. "If it wasn’t for an observant member of the public, we could so easily have missed the nest in town last autumn. It only takes one missed nest in the autumn for the populations to rapidly increase the year after.
"We are therefore trialling this approach to tracking and continue to encourage members of the public to stay vigilant and report any sightings to the Asian Hornet Team.”
Pictured: It is hoped the bait stations will help lead the Asian Hornet Strategy team to nearby nests that have gone undetected, so that they can be treated and analysed.
If you think you have spotted an Asian hornet, try to take a photograph and observe which direction it flies.
Email your sighting details and photo to asianhornet@gov.gg or call 07839 197082. The Asian Hornet Team can then use these records to track the worker hornets back to the nest.
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