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9th August 2023
11:37am BST
A second frontline has opened up in the battle to stop a full UK invastion of Asian Hornets - as they start to swarn the Kent coastline and amid warnings that they've developed a "taste for beer."
Fears have been growing in recent years that the killer bug will dig trenches in mainland Britain sparking called for a 'Dad's Army' to help stop the spread of the species.
An ongoing battle has long-raged in the Channel Islands with hundreds of nests being destroyed annually in a bid to stop them decimating the native bee population.
But it is now feared they could be establishing a fresh route from the continent and are targetting the coastline around Kent.
There had been five confirmed sightings of the insects in the county this year – in Dover, Gravesend, Folkestone, Whitstable and Deal.
Government pest experts have now descended on the Kent village of Cael-le-Ferne after a sixth one was captured there over the weekend.
This has led to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the NBU – which is the Animal and Plant Health Agency – monitoring the area for the past few days.
Simon Spratley, a pest controller and bee keeper, caught the Asian Hornet in Capel on Sunday.
Within an hour of reporting it, Spratley said someone arrived to collect it, and three hours later - once it had been confirmed as an Asian Hornet - a team was on-site to set up monitoring.
"We have been monitoring the situation for years and I think it was inevitable this was going to come," he said.
"Asian Hornets have taken over France, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. They have tracked the coastlines and we here near Dover would always be one of the first places to see these.
"We have a lot of movement of vehicles across the water so they can hitchhike on a truck overnight."
He added, as a beekeeper, he is not fearful of the rising number of sightings as he feels he knows how to respond to them, but feels education is important. “As a member of the general public who has no awareness of them, education is key,” he said.
A warning to residents to remain vigilant was first issued in the county in April after one of the insects was seen in Folkestone.
In July, a second warning was issued after Defra spotted another in Dover.
The invasive hornet originates from South East Asia and is known to both attack and eat honey bees.
They are not generally aggressive towards people but an exception to this is when they perceive a threat to their nest. Their sting can be deadly due to their long stinger and potent venom. The venom can cause people with certain allergies to go into anaphylactic shock and die within minutes.
Defra is asking anyone who thinks they have seen a nest to report via the Asian hornet watch app or online and include a picture if possible.
Defra’s chief plant and bee health officer Nicola Spence said: “By ensuring we are alerted to possible sightings as early as possible, we can take swift and effective action to stamp out the threat posed by Asian hornets.
“That’s why we are working at speed to locate and investigate any sightings in Folkestone as Asian Hornets have been confirmed in the area."
The battle in the Channel Island of Jersey has long been seen as vital to stop the spread of the insects that could invade the UK and decimate the native bee population.
The species began to spread through Europe in 2004 after arriving in the south of France inside a freight ship. They were was spotted in the British Isles on the Channel Island of Jersey in late 2016. But after years of establishing themselves on Jersey and Guernsey the battleground shifted last year to Southern England.
This led to calls for a "people's army" to help fight off an impending invasion of killer hornets onto mainland Britain.
Last week the Asian Hornet Team in Guernsey warned that the pests had developed a taste for beer and could start invading pubs.
Guernsey's Asian chief hornet huntsman recently told the Daily Star that the hornets had taken a liking to beer, leading to fear they could invade the UK's pubs as they start to spread to the mainland.
He told the publisher: "We have noticed over the last few summers that Asian hornets have a taste for alcohol.
"We have pictures of hornets over beer glasses. We've got them over glasses of Champagne and they do seem to find summer parties, barbecues, pub gardens and that's where we occasionally get reports of Asian hornets turning up and that's a good place for us to start tracking and working out where their nests are."
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