Or perhaps I should say my bees are under attack. Today is the 30th of August. It’s a Friday morning and a lot has happened in the last 24 hours. I had better start at the beginning . . .

I have an out apiary on the ridge in Hastings not far from the Conquest hospital. Last Tuesday (27th August) I looked through the supers on my 7 colonies trying to see what sort of honey crop I had. I then added my clearer boards. I was in the apiary for an hour and saw no hornets. On Wednesday (28th August) I went up and fetched 13 supers to extract at home. I had to go to the apiary twice as my new Dacia, despite its capacious boot, cannot accommodate that many supers. All was quite normal in the apiary and the bees were busy. By 1130am I had all the supers back home.

Wednesday was a long day of extraction and Lesley and I eventually finished at 7pm. It was a hot day with no breeze and the evening was a still one. It was not yet dark. I took my first 6 supers back and by 730pm was placing them back on my hives. Some supers I had to walk a little way down the field, placing them on a crown board near the hive from which they had come. The smoker was lit and I was preparing to lift my clearer board off the hive at the very bottom of the field. I was aware of a low whirring sound. And there she was. A dreaded Asian hornet evidently interested in having a sweet treat.
I have been to all the lectures and read all the articles but somehow it was still a surprise. I unzipped my bee suit and got out the phone and started to take pictures. I need photographic evidence, I thought, otherwise I may not be believed. Having gathered the necessary photographic evidence I swatted the thing, I must confess. The force of my blow severed the head and thorax from the abdomen, snapping the hornet in half at the petiole. What was rather gruesome was the that the head and thorax and wings still functioned and walked around on the super. My big mistake was not trying to collect this specimen for the bee inspectors so genetic analysis could be done. I am afraid I rather recoiled in horror at the head walking towards me and just flicked it back into the super. Then I became aware of another whirring sound at an adjacent hive: there was indeed a second Asian hornet hawking for protein. So Peter Coxon is right after all - I am in the front line here in St Leonards and have now the dubious claim to be the first one with bees under attack from the Asian hornet, At 7:40pm I headed home, told Lesley the bad news and then returned with the next 7 supers. By then it was getting dark and I had to return the supers by using the headlights of the car to light up the hives; as before, my smoker billowing out smoke so as to drive the bees back down into their brood boxes before placing the supers back on the hives.
Well at least the Asian hornets don’t hawk at night, I thought, so any young bees that end up outside the hive will have time to make it back in before morning without falling prey to a hornet.

Once back home Lesley wanted to see the photos. They were clear. It really was an Asian hornet. I have the hornet app on my phone and so we started the process of reporting a sighting. The process was complicated by the fact that the app is so clever that it wanted to record the sighting at our home address as the app evidently knew where we were. This took some time to sort. If any of you have an out apiary and see the hornet, try and report the sighting in your apiary - it’s easier. It then gives the bee inspectors an accurate grid reference of exactly where your hives can be found.
We uploaded three photos and then for good measure I also sent a message and photos to our new High Weald bee inspector, Helen Hadley (if you have a direct line to God, why not use it?), and also to our seasonal bee inspector, Dan Morgan.

At 1030am on the 29th of August I missed a call. It was the regional bee inspector. He was wanting details of how to find the apiary. I left him a voicemail and a message with the address of the farm where I keep my bees. I also sent the address to Helen and Dan for good measure. The seasonal bee inspector then phoned me at about 11am and then again at 12pm to say he was sending over two inspectors  from Ashford and they would be there in a couple of hours, was that ok? You bet your bottom dollar that was ok by me! At about 1230pm Lesley and I made our way up to the apiary. To be honest I was dreading what I might find. We told the owner of the farm and the farm shop that inspectors would be arriving and then we went down the field. Nothing, niet, nada. Not an Asian hornet to be seen. Several European hornets but NO Asian hornets! Then after about an hour and a half, I spotted one and then Lesley spotted another about a half hour after that.

While waiting for the inspectors I removed the clearer boards. Then I made my way up the field and waited in the car park in my bee suit. The ‘inspectors’ arrived soon after and I led them around the back of the farm shop and the hangars where tractors and equipment are kept and they then drove me down the field. They wanted to know who Lesley was as they certainly didn’t want this turning into some sort of circus with uninvited beekeepers milling around and getting in the way.

Almost immediately they started setting up bait stations (about 5 of them).

We discovered Stewart Westsmith was a bee inspector ( he covers Surrey and the surrounding counties) but that John was in fact employed by the NNSS and is an expert on amphibians and reptiles. He was however in charge of destroying any nests that are found. Evidently he had been seconded to that job and was enjoying working outside. Helen had asked me to put out a bait station and as I had some trappit I had done so but the bait station was attracting no interest whatsoever. At some point what looked like a butterfly net appeared and we started looking for Asian hornets. Still nothing and then of course frustratingly while Stewart went off to place a bait station, Lesley spotted one. The waiting game started again and then finally about 15 minutes later Lesley spotted another one and Stewart caught it in his net.

He didn’t want to kill it, he just wished to get it feeding on trappit as he needed this Asian hornet to become addicted to this sweet treat. She took some convincing, I can tell you. Droplets of trappit had to be smeared across the mesh of the butterfly net to convince this Asian hornet to feed. At one point it looked as if she was going to bite through the mesh! But finally she realised what she was meant to do and she started licking up the trappit.

Stewart had her in his net in the middle of the field as he was going to release her and see if he could see what direction she flew off in. When eventually after 15 minutes or so he did release her she flew around in circles and none of us did get a clear idea of what direction she headed off in. She flew towards the hives. She flew back in our direction. She landed in the grass. She took off again and flew around us, then she seemed to land in the grass and we just lost sight of her. Today (August 30th) Stewart and John are coming back with a team of inspectors, several from Scotland as he is training them. I believe there are also going to be people from a company called pollenize who are going to be placing bait stations and a mobile phone or two which is meant to be able to detect Asian hornets.

Saturday 31st. I went up to my apiary in the morning  to reduce entrances on some hives. The inspectors were elsewhere and no sign of any Asian hornets. Their bait traps contained wasps.  Late afternoon Stewart rang me to say they had located the nest 700m from my apiary. One of the bait stations placed somewhere in the direction of the line taken the previous day had contained 5 hornets on Saturday morning and from there they were able to time and then work out the location of the nest. Presumably those five hornets had got a taste for the bait and then came back for more and that enabled them to time their return which in turn informed them about the distance of the nest(1 minute for every 100 metres).

They don’t destroy the nest, that is a job for another team. He mentioned they would use a cherry picker so access must be good. Sometimes this is not possible and they have to use a team of climbers. The nest was bigger than the size of a football. Evidently a secondary nest that would soon be raising gynes hence the urgency to locate and destroy it. I am told by Helen that at this time of year the inspectors can be working on Saturdays and Sundays as well, as these nests are considered to be an ‘outbreak’.  Stewart and his team were staying in a hotel in Ashford and responding to any reported sightings. He had extra help with him as he was training a group of Scottish bee inspectors so they are prepared for what is to come. It seems to me that there is currently urgency to find these nests before our countryside gets peppered with mated gynes capable of establishing colonies next Spring. So everyone needs to be vigilant. September/October is when gynes are raised (please correct me if I am wrong). I am writing this article so everyone is on the qui vive. One should put out bait stations in one’s apiary and look at your hives early in the morning and late in the evening. If you are in an area where there has been a nest destroyed, definitely put out bait traps in March to catch Asian hornet queens and these will have  to be killing traps in my opinion.

Lessons learned

• If you trap or kill an Asian hornet keep it so the body can be analysed.
• Report your sighting on your phone on the Asian hornet app in your apiary - this gives the bee inspectors the accurate location of your hives In preparation use the internet to get an accurate location of your apiary with a grid reference and write it on your hive records
• Know the phone numbers of your seasonal bee inspectors so they can be informed immediately - Dan Morgan 07500 954390 - Helen Hadley 07871 320316
• Take photographic evidence if at all possible
• Have some traps ready
• At this time of year make sure any traps are not blocked by leaves
• Have a bottle of trappit in your bee shed (High Weald members have been able to obtain this this year at one of our Horsted sessions)
• Talk to any landowners of an out apiary about track and trace and what happens. It’s important those inspectors get access.

Malcolm Wilkie

St Leonards on Sea

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Postscript - Timeline

• Wednesday evening 28-Aug-24
  Malcolm spotted Asian Hornet and photographed it
  Reported the sighting
• Thursday morning 29-Aug-24
  Bee Inspector called Malcolm
  Thursday afternoon Bait stations put out
• Friday 30-Aug-24
  Bee Inspectors continue to track trapped hornets
• Saturday 31-Aug-24
  Bee Inspector called Malcolm to say that nest had been located about 700meters away from the apiary
• Tuesday  03-Sep-24
  Nest destroyed
  Monitoring to continue for five days