As we head towards the warmer months, authorities in Majorca are bracing themselves for a new wave of Asian hornets. Also known as the yellow-legged hornet, it is an invasive species in many European countries, indigenous to Southeast Asia.
Spain’s Ministry of the Environment is imploring residents and tourists to be on the lookout, take a photo, and notify them if they find a nest or see a hornet. Do not touch or try to catch them, as their stings are more serious than those of western honey bees. Those who are allergic or particularly sensitive to stings should remain alert. Indeed, several people have died or been hospitalised with anaphylactic shock as a result of multiple stings.
Asian hornet nests are spherical in shape and usually found in lofts, balconies or shutters. It is vital to detect and destroy them to prevent spreading and to build secondary nests, which can house up to 3,000 hornets.
The aim is to prevent the Asian hornets from expanding across Majorca and to reduce the damage they cause to beekeeping, agriculture, the environment and humans.
The hornets themselves (official name Vespa velutina) are darker in colour than native species. While significantly smaller than the European hornet, measuring between 17 and 32 millimetres long, they have distinctive yellow legs, a brown or black thorax and a brown abdomen. Each abdominal segment has a narrow posterior yellow border, except for the fourth segment, which is orange. The head is black and the face yellow.
Asian hornets originate from the tropical regions of southeast Asia, including northern India, Pakistan, China, Thailand, and Malaysia. They have become an invasive species in France, where they are believed to have arrived in boxes of pottery from China in 2004. By 2009, several thousand nests were in the area of Bordeau and surrounding departments, and by 2015, they were reported over most of France.
It was then detected in Spain a few years ago and spread very quickly through the south of the country and the Balearics, as well as in the north in Galicia and the Basque Country. It arrived in Germany in 2014, and the first sighting on the UK mainland was announced in 2016.
In 2017, a man was killed in Galicia, Spain after being stung over 20 times while pruning an apple tree. Several people have died in southwest France near the original introduction site, including a 60-year-old woman in Gironde, Nouvelle-Aquitaine in 2019 and a farmer in Orival, Charente in 2020.
The major concern about their invasiveness, however, is that when they find a honey bee colony or apiary, they kill the bees and their brood to feed their own brood larvae.
Majorcan Councillor Joan Simonet has pointed out that “it is urgent to take intensive action in the territory by setting traps during this spring. For this reason, as part of this 2025 exercise, we will allocate a total of 28,000 euros [£23,500] from the Next Generation EU funds to reinforce and intensify field work in the months of March, April and May, with the installation of a thousand traps in the areas affected by the species last year, as well as in the surroundings of these areas as a preventive measure”.
21 nests were detected across Majorca last year, which were all removed, despite the fact that island declared it had eradicated the species in 2021.
If an Asian hornet is seen, it should be reported to the Species Protection Service (especies@dgmedinatural.caib.es) or to the Green Line of the Consortium for the Recovery of the Fauna of the Balearic Islands (COFIB) so that the nests can be located and eliminated. An infographic on the Species Protection Service website can be downloaded to help with identification and avoid confusion with native wasps.
Source link
