Which hornet is it?
Take a photo of the insect, as close and sharp as you can, from above or the side. ARIA names it and says what the hornet map knows around you. About 6 credits; the photo is not kept.
Sign in to identify from a photoTested on 195 community-checked photos (iNaturalist, CC BY / CC0): 161 named right, 22 “not sure”, 11 wrong; of 33 “Asian hornet” answers, 1 was not one. A photo is a clue, not proof — the authorities confirm.
Find the nest
Watch a hornet leave a bait station: note the direction it flies off and time how long it is away. The longer it is away, the farther the nest. From two stations the two flight lines cross near the nest. Nothing here is saved or sent.
Before you start
- Never touch, spray or cut down a nest yourself — hornets defend it in numbers.
- Only watch. Catching, marking or releasing hornets needs permission in some countries (in Great Britain a National Bee Unit licence; in the EU, Regulation 1143/2014 forbids releasing invasive species). It works best when a single hornet visits the bait and you can tell it apart.
- Report what you find: in Great Britain with the Asian Hornet Watch app or alertnonnative@ceh.ac.uk; elsewhere to your country’s agriculture or environment authority.
Where the bait is
Tap the map, or use your location.
Shaded: the likely area from each station. Dashed: the flight line; white dot: the rule-of-thumb distance. Red: where two lines cross.
Where the numbers come from
Distance range and search angle: Frontiers in Insect Science 2022, “Method for nest detection of the yellow-legged hornet in high density areas” (doi 10.3389/finsc.2022.851010): flight time is half the round trip less 45 seconds at the nest, at 1.8–5.4 m/s; 10° either side under 10 minutes, 15° above. Rule of thumb: about 100 m for each minute away (Jersey beekeepers; University of Exeter), unreliable under two minutes (Asian Hornet Action Team). Idea from the open-source hornet-nest-locator (MIT).