Get ready for the invasion of the hornets

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They gatecrash garden parties, blight barbecues and leave sunbathers in a state. And this summer, wasps and hornets could be out in greater force than ever before.

Wildlife experts are predicting a bumper crop of the striped undesirables over the next few months following the mild winter and warm, early spring.

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Wildlife experts are warning of an invasion of wasps and hornets at summer garden parties and barbecues after the mild winter and warm, early spring

The early signs are that an unusually high number of hornet and wasp queens survived the winter in attics, garden sheds and under log piles.

Many emerged from hibernation four weeks early in April to prepare their nests and build up their colonies of workers.

The Natural History Museum says it has had already had a "unprecedented" number of calls from the public reporting large numbers of hornet queens.

Stuart Hine, manager of entomology, said: "This is the time of year when you might expect the wasp queens to be just out of hibernation.

"The queen is the sole survivor of last year's wasps and it's usually around mid-May that they are going for the nectar in flowering plants and rasping at rotten wood to produce the pulp for their nests.

"This year, however, we were getting calls from late March and throughout April and May about a large number of queens. They made a very early show." A freezing winter or a cold wet spring is often followed by a slump in wasp numbers. "Winter will make or break them - a good mild winter means more queens survive," added Mr Hine.

"However, the last few winters have been so mild that it barely makes any difference.

"The more important factor now is the spring weather when they emerge. If it's cold and wet, they will not do so well.

"We had an exceptional warm and mild March and April and I think it will be a good year for them."

The museum was swamped with calls after reports that a new invasive species, the Oriental hornet, or Asian "killer" hornet, could be arriving from southern France. "So far it's been the year of the hornet," said Mr Hine.

"Throughout May we had a lot of calls about hornet queens. People thought they were seeing the Oriental hornet, but this was not the case - they were seeing our native European hornet queens.

"These are formidable looking insects with a body length of up to five centimetres." Hornet and other wasp queens mate in autumn before hibernating in sheds, holes in fences, in trees or indoors, often hanging by their jaws from planks, rafters or other rough surfaces.

They emerge in the spring to feed on nectar and make their "embryonic nests" - small spherical homes created from chewed-up wood pulp in hollow trees, underground or in building cavities. In late June and early July, new male workers build up the nest to the size of a football and forage for food - paralysing grubs and caterpillars with their sting and bringing the bodies back to the nest where they are chewed up to provide nourishment for the wasp grubs.

 

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