Bee killing hornets on their way to UK
ASIAN hornets could colonise Britain within a generation and devastate the nation’s honeybees.
Hundreds of thousands of the aggressive insects are set to invade the UK within the next two decades, according to expert forecasts.
Government officials are already on high alert for the arrival of the hornet, which preys on honeybees by waiting outside their hives.
It has caused devastation across France, where it arrived from Asia in a shipment of pottery in 2004, and spread to Italy and Spain. Last year it took experts ten days to track the UK’s first Asian hornet nest, which was found 55ft up a tree close to Prince Charles’s Highgrove Estate.
The nest, and a single hornet found in North Somerset, were destroyed, but more are likely to follow, according to researchers at the universities of Warwick and Newcastle. Using data from the Andernos-les-Bains region in South-West France, they have mapped a similar potential invasion in the UK over 25 years.
Lead author Professor Matt Keeling said: ‘Our research shows the potential for this predator to successfully invade and colonise the UK, spreading rapidly from any new invasion site. Even if we have managed to successfully control this first invasion, the presence of a growing population in Northern Europe makes future invasions inevitable.’