East Grinstead Beekeepers Association

The Asian Hornet

An informative talk was given to us in February 2024 by Tom Bickerdike, SE Regional Bee Inspector.

There were very many useful and interesting takeaways. For example, the NBU are categorising and prioritising various areas of the country into red, amber and green and in the most severe Asian Hornet hot spots they are planning to put traps out every square kilometre.

Currently the EGBKA area is categorised as Green. The only action needed is to ensure your bees are healthy and if you want to, put out selective traps which are checked regularly and any by-catch released. If you catch or see an Asian Hornet report it using the Asian Hornet Watch app.

It is suggested that when we put traps out, we should be logging them, their position and checking them every 2 days to release by-catch. However, there is currently no system or tool in place to help in this task. FYI East Sussex is 1709 sq km, so potentially a lot of traps.

More information can be found at the BBKA Asian Hornet information page.

A video recording of the talk may be found below: