What France taught me, and what UK bee farmers should do now
I don’t feel entirely comfortable writing about this subject because my personal experience is so limited. However, I have been doing a little research to try to get my knowledge up to date, and thought I might as well pass on my findings to anybody interested.
Beautiful, and maybe not a problem
In May 2018, I spent a few days with Richard Noel at Corseul in Brittany. I went partly to see how a growing bee farm copes with the yellow-legged hornet (YLH), although it was called the Asian hornet at the time (I often still call it that). It was queen hornet season; warm, sunny, and the field of oilseed rape adjoining Richard’s land was bright yellow. Hawthorn was beginning to flower. Founding queens were working the hedges, and one posed for me on a cotoneaster. I thought they were rather beautiful: black, yellow-legged, with a single orange band, humming past low and loud. They are noticeably smaller than the “normal” hornets that we are used to seeing, and much darker in appearance.
Richard had lived with them since 2015. I asked him about what he thought might happen when they come to the UK. “I, personally, don’t think it will ever be a major problem in the UK,” he told me. He felt that we would get the odd nest, but that there would be good organisation and plenty of people to deal with it. Eight years on, the National Bee Unit (NBU) found and destroyed 161 nests in England in 2025. This August one turned up at Chadderton, near Oldham, 25 miles (40 km) from my nearest apiary. In France, the invasion front advanced 67 to 82 km a year (Keeling et al. 2017), which is more than 25 miles. Maybe I’ll have to deal with YLHs next year, but I hope not. If the hornet settles here, and Defra’s own analysis suggests it already has, what will it do to our colonies and our businesses? And what have French, Spanish and Portuguese beekeepers learned that we can use?
Where the UK stands
From 2016 to 2022 the NBU dealt with one or two finds a year; in 2023 it destroyed 72 nests (APHA). 2024 was quieter, with 24 nest destructions (NBU). Then 2025 brought 544 credible sightings and 161 nests (NNSS).
This year the number of sightings is lower but over a wider area. By 29 October 2026 the NBU had logged 234 sightings and 88 nests (NBU). By my count, 48 of those were in Kent. The rest run from Dorset and Somerset to Suffolk, Lincolnshire and Greater Manchester. I have no idea why the 2026 number is lower than 2025. Weather, fewer queens or fewer people looking are possibilities, and if anyone knows, feel free to say so by commenting. Which reminds me, I have heard that some people wishing to comment on this blog have problems doing so. If that’s you, I’m sorry about that, and will try to look into making it smoother.
In December 2025 Defra decided the NBU would not run spring queen trapping in England in 2026. Finding and destroying nests works better, it said, and it would “continue to support an eradication policy” (NBU). However, three months later Defra reported work that seems to go against the “eradication” strategy. A Fera PhD study of how nests found from 2016 to 2024 were related “suggested that there is a limited established population of YLH in England” (NBU). The research is a PhD study not yet published, but the statement is signed by Defra’s Bee Health Policy Team. Genetic analysis of English YLHs was dropped for 2026, so the NBU also stopped collecting samples from spring sightings, though it still contacts the people who report them.
Timing of nest destruction is important. 32 nests were destroyed on or after 30 September 2025, and Fera estimated each had an 18% to 50% chance of having already produced males (NBU). Late nests are the dangerous ones, because of mating and the production of huge numbers of queens that will hibernate over winter and establish nests the following year.
Wales has gone the other way. After its first nest was found near Wrexham, the Welsh Government asked the NBU to run targeted spring trapping with selective traps. The notice, reposted by the local community council, calls this “the most effective control mechanism” (Hope Community Council). The NBU’s notice for England uses that same phrase for finding and destroying nests, which seems a contradiction.
What it does to a colony
Yellow-legged hornets hover at the entrance and pick off returning foragers, which is called hawking. Their actual tactic is closer to a kestrel’s than a hawk’s. A YLH hovers on the spot in front of the entrance and snatches returning foragers as they arrive rather than chasing bees across open country. A French study combining field observation with a colony model found two routes to the collapse of a colony (Requier et al. 2019). Light pressure kills foragers, which hurts colonies that are already weak. Heavy pressure brings about foraging paralysis: the bees stop flying, sit tight and eat their stores. In the model, paralysis was the main road to winter losses. In many ways, the effect is similar to having awful weather in late summer, which causes colonies to be too small going into winter. The bees are poor at fighting back; in south-west France their defence was disorganised and ineffective (Arca et al. 2014).
Some direct evidence about YLH pressure comes from Galicia, Spain, in a field experiment rather than a model. Researchers protected some of 36 hives with electric harps and left the rest exposed. The protected colonies foraged more, brought in more pollen, raised more brood, had heavier workers and survived the winter better (Rojas-Nossa et al. 2022). That sounds like a big win for the harps. Galician researchers say that under heavy hornet pressure, bees in their region can stay shut in the hive, hardly foraging, from mid-June into winter (Diéguez-Antón et al. 2022).
A 2023 French study estimated that under high predation up to 29.2% of colonies could be lost each year, at a cost of up to €30.8 million (Requier et al. 2023). That is a worst-case estimate from a model, so who knows how meaningful it is. Honey bees are not the only prey. In 16 nests in south-west France, an average nest ate 11.32 kg of insects in a season, from at least 159 species: 38% honey bees, 30% flies and 20% social wasps, with predation peaking in early October (Rome et al. 2021).
I had a little exchange of messages with Richard Noel recently, which was interesting. He had his best harvest ever in 2026: five tonnes, about a tonne above his recent average. Yet, his colonies are going into winter smaller than he’d like, with fewer winter bees. His summer was dry, the flow ended early, and the phacelia, mustard and ivy pollen never came. Then the hornets arrived hungry. Richard adds that this is the usual pattern. Wild insect numbers fall away in the August and September dearth, just as hornet nests reach their peak size before the new queens leave. With little other protein about, honey bees take the brunt, and with no pollen or nectar coming in, colonies head into winter underfed and short of nurse bees. The French nest study fits his timing, with predation peaking in early October, although the hornets’ diet stayed varied (Rome et al. 2021).
Another thing that ruins colonies late in the season can be high varroa mite infestation. The combination of varroa plus hornets must be tough. A Catalan trial makes the following observation: under heavy hornet pressure and heavy varroa, 32 of 36 colonies were dead by late November, and the authors could not say which did more harm (Roura-Pascual et al. 2025). Richard knows how to control mites, but it’s worth mentioning them, as recently non-treatment has risen in popularity (it’s certainly popular with the varroa mites). The lesson is that hornet damage does not show in the honey harvest so much. It shows next spring, in the colonies that didn’t make it, which then impacts next year’s crop.
What France learned: Richard then and now
In 2018 Richard was a firm believer in spring queen trapping. “Trapping queens in the spring is the number one easiest solution,” he told me. His local communes had set approximately 5,000 traps across 60 communes and caught about 9,000 queens. In 2016, his first full hornet year, he had put screens in front of his hives. After the trapping, he said, there were hardly any adult nests the following year.
To his credit, he also doubted himself. He wondered aloud whether the drop was partly the invasion running out of steam in its second year.
The effectiveness of spring trapping is something that has been researched. A French study found spring traps barely worked when the weekly average temperature was below 10 °C, and called spring trapping “highly questionable” without a hornet-specific bait (Monceau et al. 2012). An eight-year survey of 528 nests found that the location of traps made no difference to where nests appeared (Monceau and Thiéry). In Italian trials, hornets were just 3.65% of the spring catch in the best trap and bait combination (Lioy et al. 2020). The team that measured that 11.32 kg concluded that non-selective traps harm wild insects more than the hornet itself does, since four to six small traps catch as many insects as a nest eats (Rome et al. 2021). In Galician vineyards, hornets were only 5 to 7% of spring trap catches, and doubling or tripling the traps did nothing to reduce damage to the grapes (Lueje et al. 2025).
The best case for trapping comes from Trégastel, in Côtes-d’Armor like Corseul, where around 60 volunteers trap queens every spring and publish the results (GDSA22, 2025). Secondary nests found by 1 September fell from 52 in 2022 to 18, then 14, then 10 in 2025. In spring 2025, their 122 traps caught 2,791 yellow-legged hornets. The standard trap took 2.8 other insects for every hornet; a selective model cut bycatch to 0.9 insects per hornet, but caught far fewer hornets. An earlier report put the campaign’s total bycatch at 200 to 300 g a year (Bee Craft).
That is a striking fall in nests, and it is the best evidence on Richard’s side of the argument. But the organisers themselves say it is too early to call the campaign a success. The catch is a poor guide to numbers, too: it rose in 2025 after a mild winter, while nests kept falling. And Richard’s own doubt from 2018, that invasions ease after the first years, applies here as well. He calls France’s new national plan against the hornet “a disaster” because it does not push spring trapping hard enough. The plan stems from a law passed in March 2025, and the government says the rules behind it are meant to prevent non-selective traps (Assemblée nationale).
Richard has answers to some of this. His group traps for a short window, usually from the last week of March to the end of April, when he says few beneficial insects are flying. The Trégastel figures partly support him: in 2025 the first European hornet catch was reported on 1 May, and the first yellow-legged workers on 3 May, so a campaign ending in April catches mainly queens. He also says many selective traps are too selective, and that his old-style drowning traps catch founding queens the selective ones miss. Trégastel fits that too: the organisers found the selective trap attracted few hornets early in the season, and it caught under a third as many as the standard one, 645 against 2,146 (GDSA22). He said that the sacrifice of a few can save the majority (of other insects).
He now doubts autumn trapping, though. When his group dissect the young queens from a nest that has not yet released them, their bodies are packed with fat, whereas the hornets caught in late-summer traps have almost none. He thinks new queens go straight into hibernation, so autumn traps catch mostly spent workers and drones, as happens with wasps. That is unpublished observation, and he says himself it could be read other ways, but it would explain why autumn queen trapping disappoints.
One practice that I heard about on my visit must not cross the Channel. Some people stun a foraging hornet, paint fipronil on its back and let it fly home to poison the nest. Richard called it an unregulated home treatment. Here in the UK, releasing a live yellow-legged hornet without a licence is an offence (GOV.UK).
Spain, Portugal, and the island that won
Richard told me in 2018 that things were worse further south. The evidence agrees, at least for Atlantic Spain. The hornet reached Spain in 2010 and Portugal in 2011 (Keeling et al. 2017). In Galicia, it does best in low, humid coastal areas (Rodríguez-Flores et al. 2019).
The Iberian figures that matter most to a bee farmer are costs. A 2021 survey of 151 Galician beekeeping units put the cost of control at 14% to 21% of the value of their honey (García-Arias et al. 2024). Across four Atlantic regions, control cost €7.9 million in 2020, from 5.1% of honey value in Nouvelle-Aquitaine to 20.5% in the Basque Country (Entomologia Generalis). That is a heavy burden, and one which would have to be passed on to customers, I think.
The one clear win is Mallorca which saw the arrival of the YLH in 2015. Trapping, public reports and nest removal found 30 secondary nests in three years, then none after that (Leza et al.). It became the first European territory to eradicate the species (Herrera, UIB). Mallorca has more than 150 km of sea between it and mainland Spain. Hornets can reach it on ferries and freight, but researchers there think they cannot fly there on their own (Leza et al.). Kent is about 33 km from France, and genetic tests on the English nests found from 2016 to 2019 showed each was a separate arrival from the continent (Jones et al. 2020). Queens keep coming to the UK, whatever we destroy.
Methods compared
The electric harp has the best field evidence of helping colonies. The evidence for muzzles is mixed. Everything else is about killing hornets, and the evidence there is thinner than its supporters think.
| Method | What the evidence shows | Downsides | With many apiaries |
| Entrance muzzle (a mesh cage over the entrance) | In 22 paired French colonies it did not stop bees being caught, but it greatly reduced foraging paralysis; modelled survival rose by up to 51% (Requier et al. 2020). In 36 Catalan hives, muzzles did not cut hornet numbers or raise bee activity, and every muzzled colony collapsed, as did every unprotected one; but this muzzle used 10 mm plastic mesh, against 6 mm metal mesh in the French trial, and the authors report heavy varroa (Roura-Pascual et al. 2025). | May not hold under heavy pressure | Cheap, but one per hive |
| Electric harp | In the same Catalan trial, harps cut hornet numbers, and about a quarter of harp colonies were still active when all the others had collapsed; varroa was heavy but not measured, and all colonies were fed (Roura-Pascual et al. 2025). Better colony development and winter survival in Galicia (Rojas-Nossa et al. 2022); high catch and selectivity in a small French trial (Entomologia Generalis 2023) | Cost and upkeep not measured in any study I found | The Galician manual advises one per two or three hives and calls that hardly viable in large apiaries; hornets learn where harps are, so they need moving |
| Baited trap, non-selective | Catches mostly other insects (Lioy et al. 2020) | Heavy bycatch | Easy, and bad for beekeepers’ reputation |
| Selective trap | At Trégastel, 0.9 other insects per hornet against 2.8 for a standard trap, but far fewer hornets caught (GDSA22). Better designs help (Rojas-Nossa et al. 2023); the NBU uses them in Wales | Still catches natives, so check often | Labour |
| Spring queen trapping | Disputed (above) | Bycatch; poor in cold springs | Six weeks of checking |
| Nest destruction | The backbone everywhere, but in 2020 France was destroying only 30 to 40% of the nests it detected (Pensoft) | Needs specialists | In the UK, the NBU’s job, not ours |
When I asked Richard in 2018 about an entrance platform with a mesh cover, now called a muzzle, I called it “another gadget”. He said “probably”. On the evidence since, the jury is out: one French trial says muzzles help, a Catalan one, with a coarser mesh, says they did not. Richard has since changed his mind. He now thinks muzzles help, though modestly. They push the hornets back to 6 to 8 inches (15 to 20 cm) from the entrance, so the colony is less besieged. That fits the French trial’s finding of less foraging paralysis (Requier et al. 2020), and the Galician manual’s advice to set the cage at least 25 cm out (Diéguez-Antón et al. 2025).
Personally, if I find colonies being bothered by YLHs one day, I reckon I’ll start off by reducing entrances, as I do for wasps. In fact, with my home-made underfloor entrance hive floors wasps are kept out very successfully. That doesn’t deal with hawking (kestreling?) though. Feeding both sugar and pollen could well become much more important in late summer/autumn once the YLHs move in. If they can’t forage, they need feeding.
What to do now, and if policy changes
The rules here are not France’s, and nothing below goes beyond current UK guidance.
Currently, within the rules
- Report every suspect with a photo through the Asian Hornet Watch app, the UKCEH online form, or alertnonnative@ceh.ac.uk (NBU).
- Leave nests to the specialists. Report a suspected nest and let the NBU deal with it. APHA’s advice is plain: “Do not attempt to destroy a nest yourself” (APHA, September 2026).
- The NBU encourages selective traps in spring and baited monitoring stations from summer, checked frequently so native insects can be released (NBU). Your local Asian Hornet Team will help.
- Send colonies into autumn strong, fed and low in mites. Richard’s dry year shows why: a forage failure and hornets together are worse than either alone. Galician researchers call varroa the hornet’s best ally because hornets pick on weak colonies. They advise taking the honey off before peak pressure and treating straight after, and warn that one treatment is typically not enough (Diéguez-Antón et al., Manual de gestión de Vespa velutina en los colmenares, 2025).
- Keep muzzles in mind. They are cheap, but the field evidence is mixed: they helped in a French trial and not in a Catalan one. Harps have stronger evidence. The same manual advises a muzzle at least 25 cm out from the entrance. It also advises reducing entrances on weak colonies only.
If policy shifts to containment
• Budget for control as a running cost. Galicia’s 14 to 21% of honey value is a sobering starting point.
• Plan for late summer and autumn. In Galicia confinement (i.e. bees staying in rather than face the hornets) ran from mid-June into winter. Richard says the pressure on his hives is critical from September.
• Keep nucs in reserve. In 2018 Richard told me that in Brittany it would be folly to rely on honey alone; his nucs replaced his losses.
• Fight to keep the NBU finding nests. At present, the NBU tracks and destroys nests itself (APHA). Containment could end that. In France, the job has been left to local authorities and others (AFP via L’Info Durable), and in 2020 researchers put the share of detected nests destroyed each year at only 30 to 40% (Pensoft).
Where the evidence is thin
• The big colony loss figures are modelled, and nearly all are French.
• No controlled study has yet shown that spring trapping reduces the number of nests, as far as I can tell.
• I don’t know if anybody has tested whether moving or siting apiaries differently helps, but it could do, depending on just how widespread hornets are in the area.
• The cost and practicality of harps across many apiaries is unmeasured, but I’m pretty sure that it’s completely impractical for bee farmers with hundreds of colonies. It sounds like they might be useful in an apiary with nucleus colonies, as they are smaller and more vulnerable. Nucs are also the best way to recover quickly from lost production colonies.
• Almost all the evidence comes from France and Spain. Our climate, forage, and bees may behave differently. The fact that the problem is worse further south than Richard in Brittany gives a glimmer of hope. Climate change is, of course, probably improving things in the UK for the hornets (hotter summers).
The hornet is a serious new cost, not the end of beekeeping. The beekeepers who cope will be the ones who get colonies strong into autumn, protect entrances, and report everything they see. Perhaps those in cooler areas would also be less impacted, but time will tell.
My book Interviews With Beekeepers features a chapter on Richard Noel, and it’s available in both hardback and paperback. He also has a popular YouTube channel.
Sources
All accessed 03 November 2026 unless stated.
• Richard Noel, interview at Corseul, May 2018, in S. Donohoe, Interviews with Beekeepers (ZunTold, 2020), pp. 225 to 260; messages to the author, 3 and 7 November 2026
• NBU: 2026 rolling update (figures as of 29 October 2026); 2024 update; spring trapping decision; kinship analyses; risk areas; Asian Hornet Teams
• APHA science blog, May 2025, and September 2026; NNSS update, November 2025; GOV.UK invasive animal rules; Hope Community Council
• Requier et al. 2019, J Pest Sci 92; Requier et al. 2020, J Pest Sci 93; Requier et al. 2023, Sci Total Environ 898
• Arca et al. 2014, Behav Processes; Roura-Pascual et al. 2025, J Appl Entomol 150 (full text, accessed 5 November 2026)
• Rojas-Nossa et al. 2022, Pest Manag Sci; Rojas-Nossa et al. 2023, Animals; Diéguez-Antón et al. 2022, Vet Sci; Rodríguez-Flores et al. 2019, J Pest Sci
• Rome et al. 2021, Ann Soc Entomol Fr; Lueje et al. 2025, Pest Manag Sci; Diéguez-Antón et al. 2025, Manual de gestión de Vespa velutina en los colmenares (accessed 5 November 2026)
• Monceau et al. 2012, Open J Ecol; Monceau and Thiéry, Insect Sci; Lioy et al. 2020, Insects; Bee Craft on Trégastel
GDSA22, Trégastel end-of-campaign report 2025, presentation of 2 September 2025, accessed 05 November 2026
• García-Arias et al. 2024, Econ Agrar Recur Nat; Entomologia Generalis, Atlantic regions; Entomologia Generalis 2023, harps; Pensoft on Barbet-Massin et al. 2020
• Keeling et al. 2017, Sci Rep; Leza et al., J Pest Sci; Herrera thesis, UIB; Assemblée nationale; Jones et al. 2020, Sci Rep 10; AFP via L’Info Durable