France vs the Asian hornet

[Bumble]

Excellent! First catch your grasshopper!

I've been reading some articles from Spain this and this. The articles suggest movement is mostly by lorries or boats.

Then I found this interactive map, which is too large to share on here. It shows large clusters of nests and sightings around Spanish ports of Corunna and Bilbao.

I liked the pictures on this page, the comment beneath one of them hints that beer might not be the best bait because it attracts too many useful insects so maybe we should learn from the Chinese, and use grasshoppers as bait.

[greengumbo]

The photo at the bottom left in that last link from Bumble would seem to suggest the hornets would acclimatise to Scotland. Although it seems not to have predicted the spread into Spain particularly well. These invasive species are usually far more plastic in terms of plausible future distribution than is generally predicted my modelling unfortunately. They are lovely looking insects mind.

[gavin]

And tasty! (Apparently)

Perfectly agree that models and also hunches (the two are related anyway) on future distributions of invasive species are often wrong. The same applies to small hive beetle although now we do have a note of caution from the regulators as well as the statements from some importers that it will not be a problem here. I seem to recall some folk claiming that Varroa, native to steamy places in SW Asia, was unlikely to do well in Scotland as it appeared for the first time in SW England.