Laurence Edwards shows how to spot the invasive Asian hornet on England's south coast. Look for a dark body, orange band on the fourth segment, and bright yellow legs. If you see one, photograph it and report it to the Asian Hornet Watch app.
The Asian Hornet appears to be wreaking havoc on the south coast of England with numerous sightings. In this video, I'm going to show you how to identify an Asian Hornet by asking yourself 3 simple questions. The first question you need to ask yourself is, does the insect look very black? From afar, the Asian Hornet is a very, very dark insect and it's predominantly black apart from a few distinguishing features. The second question you need to ask yourself is, does it have a wide-banded orange segment, 4th segment down on the back of the abdomen. It's really quite noticeable, this. All of the body is black, and then it just has a big wide orange segment on the 4th segment down on the Asian hornet's abdomen. And then the final question is, does it look like its legs have been dipped in yellow paint? It's called the Asian hornet, but it's also known as the yellow-legged hornet. It has bright yellow legs, and that's a really good way of identifying it. If you're answering yes to all of those questions, what you need to do is, at a safe distance, take a picture of the insect, upload it to the Asian Hornet Watch app, that you can download from the Play Store. You put in a few really simple details, it automatically tracks the GPS, asks for the number of insects that are there, asks you to put a picture in and try and identify it. But if you're answering yes to those 3 questions, it's likely that it is going to be an Asian hornet. You don't necessarily need to try and trap it. You definitely don't want to release it if you do trap it because that is illegal. But if you are seeing them in your garden, what you should definitely do is put out some sort of attractant and some sort of trapping system. And that's what I'm going to show you now in my next video.
